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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: 



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RENDERED BY 



THEODORE PARKER, 



THROUGH THE TRANCE CONDITION OF 



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BOSTON : 
ADAMS & COMPANY 

1870. 






Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, laj 

Saeah A. Eamsdell, 
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at "Washington. 



^|*/j>iY object iu giving a book of this kind 
;<>■%•. <w to the public, at the present time, is to- 
lay aside the oppressive barriers that 
clog up the avenues to free thought. The 
world is teeming with literature ; the false 
and true blend into service, to foster the 
spirit of progression that underlies the basis 
of materialistic conception. The world is. 
teeming with its false precepts, [false exam- 
ples and false theories. The world is 
flooded, gorged and running over, with the 
cutaneous eruptions that have blurred and 
blotted the glory of the world's past history- 



4 PREFACE. 

I give this work to mankind from my spiritual 
attainment, hoping it will reach the soul ele- 
ment and wing its way to the reasoning 
faculties of the nineteenth century. Justice 
reaches out a hand for this work, and 
hope flings pearly dust in its advancing 
pathway. 




!8S®EE^ 



CHAPTER I. 



^^HE world's secret springs of motion are 
^t)&) hidden from the external eye, and 
^9$jt? revealed to the inner orb of vibrative 
^ sensation. Hence, man's proneness to 
doubt the detailed order that underlies all 
the tissues of inorganic structure, man's 
proneness to doubt facts and truths that are 
not vividly before the outward sense of see- 
ing, will find its solution in the ignorance of 
thought, — in man's inability to grasp with 
the mind the rudimental branches of the 
earth's formative system.- The law that 
controls matter is simply a law of progres- 
sive movement, simply an undercurrent of 
reformatory action, passing in and around 
God's kingdom of strength. We see man, 
himself, acting from that same plan of pro- 



6 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; OS, 

gressive movement ; see the spirit springs of 
i'orce impelling him onward and upward, 
impelling him to build for both systems of 
.activity. Man is spirally formed, endowed 
with attributes that only find solution in the 
great, unexplored vista of future revelations. 
Man is endowed with wisdom to find his 
beginning and his ending ; to find the logic 
of life, and the even tenor of «a just God's 
movements. The life of man is co-existent 
with the divinity of purpose. Man is dually 
formed, twin-like in conception, made by 
order of material law, and fashioned to meet 
the exigences of spiritualistic movement. 

The order that underlies the frailest part 
<even of God's stupendous whole, would for- 
■ever preclude the possibility of any chance 
work in the formation of systems and worlds 
blended with network precision, and hung, 
on God's word of command, in the bound- 
less sea of space. 

It is time that man should find his start- 
ing point ; find the length, breadth and 
depth of his purposed journey ; find the 
solution to the great problem of life, and 
find the true valuation of the term " death." 
It is high time that mankind looked out 
from under their cap of ignorance to the 



THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 7 

real fact of life ; to the reality of a God 
moving in and through the outspoken grand- 
eur of earth. I have before stated that man 
was dually formed, — made by order of ele- 
mentary activity, and radiating from the 
element of matter to mingle in the fine, 
tissued web of comprehensive greatness and 
truth. Man's starting point has engrossed 
the minds of all thinking people for many a 
generation, and still the dark hue of uncer- 
tainty stands sentinel at the doorway of cor- 
rect knowledge. 

Geology has proved that the creation 
of the world was no spasmodic effort 
of will, but a combined effort of elements 
circulating in space. Geology will also 
prove that the earth-strata, or the sub- 
terranean keynote, from which the harmony 
of the world has been reared, is solidified 
lava. Geologians of all ages have spread 
their nucleus of strength to battle with the 
primitive lessons that ancient historians 
plunged in mystery and doubt, and then left 
with the seal of sanctification, made fast by 
the teutonic assumption of authority that 
claimed to be vicegerent of God, to pro- 
claim the world's formation and the world's 
salvation on the mere hypothesis of God's 



8 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE; OE, 

will. Geologians have been the world's 
greatest saviors. They have placed man- 
kind on a footing to reason from analogy to 
search farther than history for the hidden 
key to life everlasting. Geologians have 
frosted society with a silver coating of 
peace ; have fixed man's starting point on a 
principle in matter co-existing with infinite 
purpose. The materialist fashions his birth 
in matter, but he finds no principle to sus- 
tain above matter, sees no silvery lining to 
any of the earth wrought caskets that are 
illuminated with the interior perception that 
the starting point is not the finale of man's 
destiny. 

My purpose is to here show at what point 
or growth in matter God instituted the web 
of life, or at what point the woof of sen- 
sation mastered the embodiment of earthly 
substance. This is no small matter, to fisli 
backwards in the great pool of life, — to find 
what seems impossible to find, — but the 
solution must be met with energetic effort ; 
the barrier must be pulled away, and the 
basis of life be established on a principle in 
matter running parallel with infinite plan of 
cause and effect. The mystery that has 
enveloped the element of progress is fast 



THE THOSE AND POETRY OE LIFE. 



>.. 



loosing its hold, and Christianity must grap- 
ple this new basis of being with renewed 
courage and activity : for, as the old foun- 
dation is slipping away, becoming insecure 
and shaky from centre to circumference, and 
not serviceable for present need, the grap- 
pling hook of strength and indomitable will 
must rear another savior that the hand of 
time cannot destroy. The rudimental strata 
of earth is the underground car of propel- 
ling power that hangs a world on the orbit 
of time. The earth forces are so con- 
tracted, so liberalized, that in giving for the 
process of structure, the spirit camera hung 
in space ever receives the impress, and 
gives to the world of ethereality a branch 
stock, that hangs its ether dew of finesse 
substance on the great law of infinite suc- 
cess. Spirit is the formula of matter, the 
essence to outwrought purpose or the inte- 
rior function that lifts an outward symbol of 
protection through every stage of its pro- 



MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE; OR, 



CHAPTEE II. 

fN fixing man's starting point, I must 
go farther back than ancient history ; 
®|# must sweep that board clear of first 
& principles from which I shall rear my 
God-head and Savior. Ancient history has 
done its work for the world. It has reared 
a platform of evangelical faith, which the 
world needed, and which the world accepted 
without so much as a draft on common 
sense to substantiate its truth or reliabil- 
ity, as coming from the unseen fountain of 
living truth and knowledge. Ancient history 
is the by-play or secundem artem that rides 
along the billows of time, and drops an 
anchor of doubt to disturb the inglory of 
false theology. In deriving facts to battle 
with the world's primitive lessons of ego- 
tistical assumption, we must dip deep in 
God's storehouse of materiality and fashion 
man within the keeping of reason to cherish 
and hold true. 



THE PEOSE AND POETEY OF LIFE. 11 

Reason is our God-given monitor of 
strength, our propelling escutcheon of lib- 
erty, that fashions our destiny and helps to 
fashion the world we live in. It has been 
laid down as a truth in sacred history that 
this spheroid, this world of motionary grand- 
eur, sublimity and power, was once a mass of 
ehaotic ruin ; that God's linger of strength 
and wisdom pointed the way to its ultimate 
fashion and beauty ; that God's word of 
-command outstripped any law of cause and 
effect ; that God's mandate of power wrought 
symmetry and motion to the world we now 
inhabit, — a world that lays no claim of 
fashion or beauty to any power but the God- 
given principle of groAvth and intuitive wis- 
dom in nature. There is an element in mat- 
ter that fashions to the sublimity of present 
forces, or that builds for present use and 
need, that sticks no pin of doubt to any 
structure formed in systematic keeping with 
the law of harmony and filial jurisprudence. 
Mature has within her storehouse the key to 
xmlock all the elements of reform, to let 
loose the dragon of doubt, and place the 
material universe in juxtaposition with God's 
plan of progressive movement. Nature is 
<God, or nature is God's system-house, in 



12 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; 015, 

which the great principality of power rules 
to advantage. There is no system or code of 
laws in all of God's vast domain of power 
but what run parallel with the finite or infi- 
nite destiny of man. Man is the radiating 
element of power on earth, the forces of 
intellectual strength that help to fashion 
the beauty of God's rudimental structure of 
material substance. Let us go as far back 
as present truth will admit ; let us search 
deep and wide for the imperishable seed 
that is rooted in all matter, and bears its 
branches of worth into the outwroughi 
worlds in space. Mind has ever had the 
propelling force of circumstances to grapple 
with, ever had the incubus or dead weight of 
mythological teachings to ride over and 
destroy, before the sunlight of reason could 
lift a star of hope to the world. Mythology 
has ever held the reigns of sacerdotal power 
on earth, has ever had a steed of active 
flight, ready for the spur of priest-craft or 
the shambling heel of the autocrats in power. 
Mythology is flapping her wings for a flight 
beyond this world's need or aim, because 
her power is in baiting a hook to be nibbled 
at and then cast aside as worthless. 



THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 



CHAPTER III. 

>E will claim that in the beginning 
>V££:? God created man, fashioned him to 
'-',•■ ri suit the exigences of present need, 
^ built him up as a tabernacle of 
strength to battle in the world of matter ; 
that is, allowing our God to be a thinking, 
moving and predominating power, capable 
of engaging in the builders' s art, capable 
of putting out ways and means for structure, 
of liberalizing every element to the keeping 
of harmonious design. God wrought in the 
chaos that his hand of skill had imbued 
with suitable attributes to delve out what 
his plan demanded. God wrought in the 
elements of his own creating. He imbued 
his artistic genius into every part of soluble 
matter, and laid the unction of demand in 
close proximity to the tide of fashion which 
ebbed and flowed in accordance with the 
master spirit to be served. God's filial 



14 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; OK, 

spirit of love and mercy lias found a lodg- 
ment in all the vast arcana of nature. It 
speaks in all the dialects of proclaimed wis- 
dom and beauty that meet the external 
vision of man. It speaks in all the silvery 
harmony of earth combined effort ; in all the 
branches of earth formula of motion ; in all 
the tipped eaglets of power, and in all the 
simple undertones that make musical the 
vastness and wholeness of God's earth. 
God is the motionary element of time, the 
sublime Architect, who travels space and 
gives to time the key note to progress. God 
is the stationary element of power, — the 
deep-seated, internal revenue fund that 
moves at the collector's call, or the tax 
gatherer who underlies every part of God's 
structured whole. God moves in a mysteri- 
ous way ; but the mystery is in noncompre- 
hension of his attributes as a mover or 
builder. God spans the earth and heavens 
with his great arm of love ; fills all measure 
with completeness, and lifts the holly branch 
of hope to the heart-springs of ambitious 
movement. 



THE PE0SE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 



CHAPTER IV. 

{ff/«OD surrounds the earth with sure suc- 
H>v| cess ; rills all space and harmonizes 
$£§$ every element of reform. Therefore, 
"^ God is all in all, All-wise, Omnipotent 
and Everlasting ; the day star of hope, the 
tree of promise, whose branches fill the 
material world and send their blossoms into 
the nectar room of solvent light. 

" God moves in every tiny flower, 
In all the vast eternal whole, 
And breaks the widest range of power, 
To build the temple mind of man. 
• And God is seen and felt and heard, 
And lingers round our every thought, 
And gushes to the fountain head 
Of every stream out living wrought. 
And God is majesty sublime, 
Is poet, painter, genius, rare, 
Fills all the Anchor-head of time 
And gushes through the Elysian air. 
He sweeps the present board of ill 
Is with us now and everywhere." 



16 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE; OE, 

There is always something mysterious in 
a truth that does not come within our wis- 
dom of understanding or power of compre- 
hension, always something that appears 
wizard-like and elfish in facts that require 
the light of science to bring to reason's 
grasp. And mankind have never until in 
recent years ploughed in scientific fields ; 
have never wielded a key to unlock nature's 
storehouse of deep-seated worth, and open 
up illustrous truths that have long clamored 
for power on earth. Nature has taken her 
last drug or haschish of narcotic slumber. 
She has lain in her bed of dormant ease, 
until God's voice speaking to the mind of 
man is casting aside her rippling garments 
of idle seeming, and clothing herself with 
vestments of regal power and use to the 
great social hunger of mankind. The mind 
of man, ever keeping pace with nature, has 
become liberalized in accordance with 
nature's divine law of progressive move- 
ment, and has never usurped any claim but 
the one of harmonious outreach from bygone 
nonentities. 



THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 17 

" Old nature builds her storehouse deep, 
And inlaid gems are hid from view ; 
But God, the mighty Architect, 
Gives here and there a promised few 
To awaken man to deeper thought. 
Beside the living stream outwrought." 

The earth is graded — is built in layers of 
evangelical truth and harmony of design. 
The rudirnental strata of earthly substance 
is solidified lava, a conglomerate mass pro- 
pelled from the planet Saturn. Astrono- 
mers, in the solvient light of spirit realms, 
have detected in the planet Saturn a crus- 
tacious mass resembling the condition of 
lava when expelled from the burning crater 
or thrown out from the convulsions of 
Mother Earth. Astronomers have also 
detected in that same planet a disposition to 
garner for the formation of other worlds. 
The rings that encompass the majesty of 
Saturn are but reflected principles to govern 
other worlds soon to be in motion. Saturn 
throws off from her vestibule of strength the 
homogeneous masses that collect from her 
great system-house of fire. Saturn was hung 
in space centuries before the earth took form 
in the orbit of time. Let it be here under- 



18 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; OB, 

stood that the laws which govern Saturn 
also govern earth. That her law of motion 
is affixed to the motionary law governing 
time. Saturn is largely imbued with the 
principle of fire, and earth throws off a 
focus of fire in exact proportion as she 
receives that element from her mother Sat- 
urn. Some portions of earth are more 
highly imbued with that principle than oth- 
ers, showing the exact condition of the 
mother when the child earth was born. 



THE PROSE AND E03STRY OF LIFE. 



CHAFTE11 V. 

^yHE inhabitants of Saturn very largely 
-■iJ'jt resemble our North American Indian ; 
'^? therefore, a branch stock was propa- 
~0 L gated into the stubborn element sent 
into space. The Indian, or Eed Man, was 
the basis of the great brotherhood of 
man now extant on earth. As matter 
becomes liberalized it assumes the finer 
shapings of refinement, and harmonizes with 
every element in space. Baxter wrote the 
following lines of easy rhythm and beauty, 
but little heeded the interior brilliancy of 
conception in his works of daring damnation 
and sin : 



' ; Be Thou, God, exulted high, 
And as Thy glory fills the sky, 
So let it be on earth displayed, 
'Till Thou art here, as there, obeyed." 



20 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; OR, 

Baxter never could have written anything 
more exalting to the mind than the prayer 
or wish expressed in those four lines of sub- 
lime meaning and worth. Baxter's Saints' 
Best is a codicil that humanity are willing 
to leave in the back ground, where past faith 
slumbered in intolerant woe. Baxter wrote 
many a true line that was never credited to 
him, because the world at that time was 
dipped in fanaticism and bigotry, and any 
stray inkling of liberal faith was crushed and 
hid from the public mind. When mythology 
reached its height of culminating power the 
mind became sickened, and disgust crept 
into the fold of slavish fear, and a wider 
platform extended itself to ensure success to 
the new grain of truth that was sprouting 
from the old shell of corrupt, fetish and 
false worship that hid the true light under 
the robe of falsehood and guile. The Jew- 
ish nation were slaves to their heathen 
deities ; it was their false acme of pride that 
laid their stumbling block around the false 
altars of worldly power. God spoke to them 
in the tinkling of bells and clarion notes that 
called to arms a nation's warfare and tri- 
umph. God spoke to them in the mystery 
of a divided wisdom and knowledge, that 



THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LITE. 21 

sought the downfall of some and the glori- 
fied honor of those who rode in the car of 
assumptive power. God had no filial bear- 
ing to their realm of dignified authority, 
justice no claim on their attention. They 
rode the freebooter's saddle of contempt 
along the highway of public acceptance, and 
feared no jar from the undercurrent of 
nonability. 

"Hold, Jewish yoke of heathen power, 
Who.se inner temple burns but dross, 
Your fire God sodded for an hour, 
But gains to feel at length a loss. 
And through the halcyon day of time 
Did bend your bow of promise rare. 
What beauty in ancestral line 
That hoists a flag of black despair." 

The iHiberalit}' of church creeds is dying- 
out, and a new formula of evangelic toler- 
ance is dipping a beak into the public pool 
and spurting out the foamy crescents that 
ride on the waves of time, for the benefit of 
popular show and private animosity. The 
God-head of to-day bears on its surface the 
glorious stamp of a liberalized Christianity. 
The seeds of a new religion are sprouting in 
the soil of free thought, and people will wor- 



22 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; OK, 

ship at the shrine where reason holds the 
guard- chain that makes fast the bond with 
God. 

The liberal Christians, or the free-thinking 
men and women of our nineteenth century, 
are laying a basis for the future grandeur of 
earth. Mankind have drank the beverage of 
hell-fire to the soul's satisfaction and dis- 
gust, and the spirit that barred the road of 
progress is, for the want of nourishment, 
becoming weak and enfeebled, and laying in 
wait for the force of circumstances to open 
the fields of ignorant war that are scattered 
in the background of American civilization. 
The Roman Empire fed their camp fires 
from the fund of eternal damnation. Noth- 
ing so suited their slavish hearts as crime, 
and hence, God, to them, was the chief pro- 
pelling engine of onslaught and devastation, 
that hung his cloud of strength for the 
entire benefit of the Romish temples of cun- 
ning art and skill, that fed their demon gods 
on the heart's blood and vital strength of 
the serfs or snails that crept under their 
flourishing weapons of daring power. The 
cruelty of those olden times hangs like a pall 
of terror in the background of ancient fame. 
The treadwheel of time has laid many a 



THE THOSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 23 

soothing plaster on the open wounds of slav- 
ish discord that burrows in every locality on 
the face of time. Egotistical assumption 
lias driven more nails of error than bigots 
have been able to clinch and hold fast, for 
the reason that assumptive power claims 
everything, and bigotry has no assurance ; 
it sticks to the text of dogmatic rule and 
possesses great hardihood of endurance to 
maintain first principles. Bigotry never 
sticks pins of doubt ; her faith is well 
grounded, and although it may be in error 
reason holds the key note to an open con- 
fession, and sooner or later drops a bar of 
music into the old chime of selfish monopoly. 

"The keyof Reason, ever bright. 

Unlocks ;it length the darkest night; 

And leads the willing mind to see 

The beauty of that golden key 

That hangs its loop on every brow, 

To await the prestige of a vow 

Made to the throne of Reason, when 

■Gross ignorance walked on earth with men. 

The time is past, and Reason's sway 

Is making night appear like day ; 

And ever on the course of time 

She'll fledge her flight to the sublime, 

And never falter on her track, 

^Till God is gained and Heaven brought back, 

'To mingle with the affairs of men, 



24 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE; OR, 

In Christlike purity, a gem 
That sparkles inland and ov'rflows 
Oar deepest joys and darkest woes, 
And leads us with its mystic light 
Far out to God on beacon height; 
"Whose stranded feet have reached at last 
The mirage that will bridge the past, 
And sink the floating car of doubt 
Where nought will care to find it out ; 
And then can Reason search and find 
The height and breadth of humankind." 



THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 



CHAPTER VI. 



(§$N the great social maelstrom there is 
jgjj a disposition to break away from 
""^p. restraint, to fledge the demon rule for 
<j l a flight beyond this continent of 
acknowledged freedom, and to put no bars 
on the course of time to impede the great 
spirit of progress that is tearing along, 
regardless of the fluttering wail of discon- 
tent that moves inland for selfish monopoly. 
Freedom is taking a wide stride and ever 
brings an olive branch of hope to the 
struggle in bondage. No pent-up cavern 
of egotism is safe, where the great sentinel 
of life is left to go or stand on a road where 
sluggards never flourish ; freedom tunes her 
march for every occasion, and drinks in the 
spirit of reform with greedy thirst. The 
harp of a thousand strings was tuned for the 



'26 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; OH, 

great, adventuresome spirit of progress, and 
every tune has a harmonious keeping with 
the interior thirst of mankind. The birth of 
freedom was the miraculous conception that 
will flourish like the green bay tree, and 
throw out its branches of strength and com- 
fort to mingle at every hearthstone and at 
every institution of Christian worship. God 
speed the day when its clarion notes will 
sound their royal anthems in every pool 
where life exists and where intellectuality is 
the stamp mark to success. God speed the 
day when Gethsemane will sprout the true 
Christ on earth ; when the royal banner of 
peace will wave its triumphant folds over 
every outstanding post of slavery, and God's 
blessing will make bright the fields of living 
.green, whose verdure has ever borne the 
blasting touch of moral pestilence and out- 
wrought barbarity. Slavery has ever been 
an institution of wrong, and her bugle notes 
have been curses loud and long, and the 
prolonged wail of nations have been the key 
note to usher in a free torch that will burn to 
the world's advantage and to the world's har- 
monious friendship and brotherly love. 



THE PROSE AND POETSY OF LIFE. 27 

*'• When nations sweep their board of crime, 
Of fettered wrongs and feudal flames, 
Then may our birthright gift proclaim 
The glory of God's will Divine." 



Civilians of eveiy era of progress have 
planted the seeds to a Christian reformatory 
action ; the olden pedagogue style of the 
lash and coercive system of rule did not suit 
the advancement of mind. The whip lost 
its charm in family circles long ago, and the 
ferrule has dropped from the school room by 
the mutual consent of scholar and teacher. 
Reform advances, whether in family circles, 
in the social interchange of thought and 
feeling, or in the great dynasties of politi- 
cal power. The spirit of love is creeping in 
to disturb the olden element of cruel despo- 
tism ; and so God furnishes the means to 
reformatory activity by simply dropping a 
bar of music into the old chime of discon- 
tent. God never breaks a promise. We are 
the children of Israel for to-day, and the 
promised land awaits our wandering foot- 
steps. As we have prepared every field of 
earth's mirage land and fitted it for the 
harvest day, so will we be prepared to till 
the fields of promised beauty in heaven. 



28 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; OE, 

The law of adaptability keeps race with our 
every movement. There is no hurry in 
God's physical or moral laws : they are even 
handled and prone to harmony, prone to- 
reap the benefit of every act and feel the 
unfaltering hand outstretched to guide the 
way. 



THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 



CHAPTER VII. 



|rep^HERiE is symmetry pervading every 
H/>} portion and every minutia of the great 
^^ ) solar systems hung in space. This 
' Sv ^ world, bearing the name of earth, is 
but a ray in the great focus of light and 
motionary grandeur that God holds in his 
right hand of love and strength. It is but a 
speck in the vastness of the great river of 
life, and we, its children, are but sojourners 
awaiting the messenger to deliver us to a 
liigher grade of active duty. This earth is 
about midway in the scale of planetary 
greatness. It is the hub, so to speak, of 
•scientific exploration. There is no other 
planet yet explored that presents a surface 
of such mixed attributes as does earth. 
There are planets that are far in advance in 
mind, culture and research, and high intel- 
lectual grandeur, that can scale the highest 



30 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE; OK, 

walls in God's temples of knowledge. Those 
minds are stupendous in might and starry 
lustre to build to the acme of God's glorious 
whole ; their sweep of use is far removed 
from earth ; their headland point of accumi- 
lation ever points to the throne eternal, ever 
reaches for God's key note of harmonious 
blending that unites all worlds to the centric 
force of being. God has so arranged his 
plan of salvation that every soul bears on its 
surface the stamp of its legitimate attain- 
ments. Man will never lose sight of his 
starting point, because it is so fixed in his 
interior structure that its call is ever heard 
and recognized by some portion of our 
being. We only radiate from our capacity 
of memory ; we can only take our life's solu- 
tion from the paternal tree that sprouted our 
advancement, and the maternal breastplate 
of nourishment and love that protected the 
sprouted germ of our existence. That is as 
far as our legal claim can ever take us on 
the retrograde road of life. If we have ever 
had a prior existence, as some philosophers 
assert, we have no key to unlock the dark 
passage leading to the setting star that only 
shines to our acceptance from our earthly 
basis of knowledge. To that point in our 



THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 31' 

tabernacle of structure we can ever go back 
to and ever hold on our journey of life. If 
we have had a prior existence, which I very 
much doubt, because reason does not hold it 
available to us, it would manifest itself to 
some portion of our being, would stick a pin 
of cosmopolite significance into some vest- 
ment of soul or body, admitting a prior 
existence, and we lose individuality, because,, 
possessing the faculty of having been some- 
thing else, we still retain the faculty of 
becoming another structure, with no mem- 
ory to retain this life, because memory fails, 
us here to reach back of this life. Memory 
is our safeguard, ever ready to leap back- 
wards to the assistance of the present and 
ever treasuring the present for future 
advancement. Memory holds us to a pur- 
pose in life. If we had no past to retain we 
should have no aim in the future ; we should 
be drifters on the shores of time, aimless and 
purposeless, — a dead weight of accumulated 
structure. 

" No purpose here, no purpose there, 
Nor mind to see nor thought to care." 

Thus we should stand nonentites, or, sen- 
tinels without the power to guard the 



32 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE; OK, 

present gifts of God. We are fearfully and 
wonderfully made is an ancient scrip of 
truth, but the fear and wonder lies in our 
noncomprehension of Divine wisdom and 
law, 

■* '( That rules us with its magic touch, 
And guards us with its mind sublime," 

Till we are prone to believe ourselves God's 
special objects of care ; that his great pur- 
pose was to build us for worshippers at his 
throne, regardless of any will or desire of 
our own ; making us machines to worship the 
machinist, making us tools to work for his 
benefit, without fully comprehending the 
channel wherein we can best serve him. 
Such has been the world's theory of God, 
and, to some extent, the old harness of 
ignorance remains, and its fetters are bind- 
ing cords to the spirit of progress. 



THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 



CHAPTEK VIII. 

llH OD lias surrounded every altar of 
?g|j| worship, He has left the key to 
^j|> knowledge beside the flourishing stream 
o of free-thought. God is the masonic 
temple whose every branch of office has the 
golden seal of outwrought merit. God 
flourishes no personality before the world 
of matter and the world of spirit. He 
was never cooped to a structured image 
of power ; his face never wore the stamp 
of individuality ; never wore the meekness of 
the loving Jesus. His principality of power 
surmounts every gradation of honor and 
winds its key of strength around every 
weakened part on the vineyard of time. 
God was, is, and ever will be, and we can only 
comprehend the great giver of all life and its 
many blessings, both in the material and 
spiritual, from the stand point of natural 



34 MAKIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE; OK, 

affinity. God is mingled with every fibre of 
our being, — to both the outward forming 
of materialty and the inner spirit of redeemed 
worth that pierces through many grades of 
wisdom and ethereal grandeur. God is our 
starting point and the end of our proposed 
journey. God is the finale of matter and the 
ultimatum of spirit ; the great life stream 
that flows through every channel whether 
formed by nature or by the intuitive mind 
of man. 

" God folds his armor, bright with use, 

Around each graded seat of care ; 

And holds aloft the signal gun, 

To awaken us from dark despair. 

We fledge our flight, and God is near 

To bind with truth the golden sphere, 

And make life's journey, dulled with pain, 

A loud hurrah, a wild acclaim, 

Sped from the spirit, freed from earth, 

In token of its new-found birth." 

We cannot realize the formation spirit 
without a keen sense of gratitude to the 
great soul that burns an altar fire for 
the illumination of every pent-house on the 
outpost of time. God moves through the sys- 
tematic law of cause and effect, and governs 
through the law of comprehensive wisdom. 



THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 35 

The force of circumstances never alter one 
jot or tittle of God's outspoken wisdom 
and power, that lays an unction of hope and 
promise beside our will of active merit, 
which fledges itself in accordance with 
our interior perception of truth. God is the 
soul of honest intention towards humanity, 
the fundamental basis on which mankind 
can build to advantage, and hope for suc- 
cess to follow in the rear of any adventure. 
There has ever been a disposition on the 
part of man to drink at the fountain of 
the living God, to cherish a seat of power 
above the confines of earth, but limited knowl- 
edge has dressed the God-head of mercy and 
love in a spurious suit that could not with- 
stand the wear and tear of time ; and when 
reason could grasp a basis outside of 
mythology, the world had sprouted a truth 
that would throw out a branch of hope to 
every generation and build a throne of legal 
worth, whose vastness is the great river of 
thought to mankind. This river has been 
bridged by error's sway until man could 
push the spirit of freedom to the standard 
of recognized merit in the solution of the 
world's mysterious make-up and gradual 
development. It has only been a question 



36 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; Oil, 

of time with the great vibrative spirit of 
power with regard to the unfolding of natu- 
ral law, which would necessarily follow when 
mind possessed the key to unlock the funda- 
ments to first principles. Until that time 
should arrive, the necessity for a God laid its 
demand around the pent-up minds of unde- 
veloped manhood and womanhood ; they 
grasped what their minds craved in a 
superior power ; God must be a personality, 
wielding strength in the overarch of head- 
land sky. Thus the olden nations that have 
passed away have seen God from a stand 
point of selfish monopoly. Tyranny was his 
first law of rule, because that suited their 
code of dealing with each other. God ever 
assumed a guise to suit their outreach after 
power ; and they judged of his worth by the 
success of their feudal forces, that hung 
their flags of terror at every outlet of reform 
where God placed a finger of consent. 
Those olden nations were steeped in crime ; 
their bloody trophies were a disgrace on 
their escutcheon of nationality ; their clarion 
notes of war sounded the spirit of malignity, 
and God's voice could only be heard through 
the channel of assumptive pride and power. 
"Who can disclaim, with the light now before 



THE PROSE AND TOETRY OF LIFE. 37 

the world, the inappropriateness of worship- 
ping at a shrine where ancient ignorance gath- 
ered its holocaust of crime,and where ancient 
bigotry steeped itself in damnation's bitter 
cup of woe ? Who would go back to the 
God of olden history ? Who would kneel to 
the God of Israel, whose compassion was 
withheld in her hour of tribulation, when the 
heart of the whole nation went out in sorrow 
and prayer to their God of fancied worth ? 
The world has crept away from the halluci- 
nations of past weakness and imbecility of 
thought. There is no age on the calendar 
of time that mankind, at the present time, 
would be willing to drop back to. Where- 
fore is it, if the past God-head was a 
structure of truth, and competent to serve 
every outreach of principle ? There must 
have been a great leakage of the true 
material, and God have been cheated of his 
true worshippers, unless the true God 
stepped to the rescue and planted his foot of 
firmness on the entailed grounds of ancient 
rubbish. 

God has ever swelled his power to the full' 
of individual comprehension. Every note of 
compass has been in harmony with man's 
intellectual ability to grasp the bar to the 



38 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE; OR, 



reform. God is the effulgent ray that darts 
its splendor of conception across our 
benighted vision and lights up every diverg- 
ing line in our course of conduct. But we, 
with the old mortality of sin, fail to see God 
in the truth and beaiity of his purpose 
towards us. We fail to note his liberal hand 
of many comforts bestowed on our wayward, 
lives and surrounding our feet that lead in 
error's paths. We fail to acknowledge the 
receipt of the blessings that are showered 
around us regardless of our asking. God's 
gifts are bestowed alike on the just and on 
the unjust, on the lowly born and on the 
fledgelings from the higher grades of social 
bearing; all drink from the spontaneous 
gifts of God and all give out the asking- 
hand of help from the great interior want of 
human needs that are so dependent on 
God's sources of life. 

It would not make our lives more blest if 
we acknowledged God our friend, and on 
our bended knees rendered thanks for the 
unwearied efforts of God, our heavenly 
father, who works through all law to main- 
tain his systematic keeping with mankind. 
The expression of God's mercies are mani- 



THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 39 

fold and ever given in proportion to our 
need and well being. Every law in the 
physical universe is an abiding framework of 
strength and support to our exterior frame- 
work of earthly purpose. God's physical 
law in earthly structure runs through all 
matter with equal adaptiveness to the 
structure it represents. Man's whole phy- 
sical being is governed entirely by the law 
of give and take : in proportion as it gives it 
receives, else there would be a cessation of 
funds to supply the looms of manufacture 
which are attached to every standard work 
in God's system-house of vast design. God's 
vastness and incomprehensiveness will ever 
flourish an outreach to our mental vision. 
We cannot stop the tide of wealth that will 
flow in upon the soul when the prison bars 
are loosed, and the kingdom of ethereality 
is spread before us with all its gradation 
seats to claim our acceptance and our will to 
accomplish. God built the earth from a 
necessity in the law of progress, or, the law 
of expulsion, that underlies every planet 
fixed in space. Every planet of any magni- 
tude throws off the forces for centralization 
once in four thousand years, and the forces 
thrown off harmonize to the proportion of 



40 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE; OR, 

the parent planet. The law that hangs a 
world in space is the encircling arm of mag- 
netic gravitation that encompasses all matter' 
and throws its shield of enwrapment around 
the spiral points of heaven. When Saturn 
discharged her accumulated wealth the 
fundaments existed in the matter thrown off 
to a coalesce consistency, and the law of 
gravitation pointed to centralization. The 
world dropped into the space assigned to it 
as naturally as a child drops into its mother's 
arms, and undergoes a process of recuper- 
ation and individualization in very much the 
same manner as the child from the chrysalis 
state takes on the conditions to complete 
individuality. When the earth had assumed 
her basis, or, had focalized to its central 
shaping, it then began to attach to itself the 
qualifications of the parent organism, and 
build in proportion as it received the mother- 
element and in proportion as it took heart in 
its own responsibility, because the world 
has a free will agency of its own, which is 
the undergrade or financial prop which 
makes it capable of its individual merit and. 
individual progressive movement. 



THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 



CHAPTEE IX. 



world from its chaotic state was 
obliged to build what might be termed 
'@^? chaotic structure, or, in other words, 
^(t" to build from the material then in use, 
which, according to history, science and 
reason, must have been crude and unshapely, 
and in a state of flurry and bewilderment, in 
consequence of its new-found tokens of 
wealth and individual keeping. The world 
has ever built from the law of demand and 
interior fitness of accomplishment. Hurry 
or drive make no part in the law of progres- 
sive movement that works out its own 
salvation, and enters on every round of 
ascent with easy assurance and assumptive 
merit ; that picks its way clear of all distrust, 
and with a self-satisfaction that cherishes 
no ill-will to any other world on the up-hill 



42 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; OR, 

"Mankind could there a lesson take, 
And move aloft with easy tread, 

If in their search they did not seek 
The creedal system to break bread. 

" For creeds are dogmatizers all, 
That seek no truth outside of ken, 

And wield no weapons of defence 
But what comport with priestly men. 

'• Dogmatic rule will yet succomb, 
And priestly witchcraft have an end, 

When mind can ferret out the truth, 
And to its God in substance bend. 

"The world must drink the truth at last, 
And templed fame will drop its crest 

Into the cesspool that awaits 

The part of all, by God not blest. 

" God's rule will surge the world at length, 
And Mystery's shades will drop apart, 

When light will to the world descend 
Which hitherto hath seemed so dark. 

" The God of Israel hears the cry, 
And angels whisper, peace is near ; 

We'll break the fettered yoke of sin, 
And bring mankind without a fear." 

" The pearly gates are open wide, 
But earthly vision fails to see 
The extended hand of Christ, our guide, 
Our Father God, the living tree 
Whose branches wave from every port. 



THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 43 

Or loophole on the shores of time, 
Until at length each waifling caught 
Must sure acknowledge God its own ; 
And with the stamp of Key Divine 
All nature reaches the sublime," 

Because all nature has a part in the resur- 
rection morn of ethereal grandeur. All 
nature is stamped with the divinity of 
purpose, and leads out from every stage 
of development unto a higher platform of 
movement. God's system-house of natural 
atonements will lay aside its deformities in 
accordance with its interior ability to grasp 
a higher schedule of attainments. There is 
an imperceptible mind governing all matter, 
a radiating principle that we cannot detect 
with the earth formality of vision ; but when 
the earth portion of our being is removed, 
we are brought to the more subtile influences 
that control all the gradations of earthly 
substance. We cannot see the mind of man, 
only in its outwrought workings : no more can 
we see the mind in matter, only in the out- 
ward solution that meets our vision of want, 
and appeals to our sense of touch in myriads 
of w T ays that our vision of earth fails in 
detecting the key of movement. And thus 
we are led to suppose that no underground 



44 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; OR, 

strata of mind accomplishes the world's sys- 
tematic growth and beauty, and we are led 
to believe that chance is the master builder 
and finisher of this epitome of power and 
grandeur we now inhabit, and which throws 
its banner of growth far into the world of 
magnetic fervor and divine accomplishment. 
To thee, Oh, God ! we bow with a heart 
filled with reverential trust and mind reach- 
ing to the precints of thy spirit locality for 
seeds of wisdom to plant on the river shore 
of time, and for seeds of truth, whose garner- 
ing will be fruits mete for the hand of love 
to cherish. 

' ' The Hand whose beauty claims our eye, 

And ever proves that God is nigh, 

With chastening rod and love sublime 

That e'en outlasts the law of time ; 

And with its filtering touch of care, 

Makes earth sublime and Heaven most fair," 

To gladden our interior perception and make 
us willing strivers for the love-house of God's 
own keeping. 



THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 



CHAPTER X. 



wpOD stamps the individuality of purpose 
H^| around every soul bearing legitimate 
%$$ attainment, to foster the seed of pro- 
"^ gressive keeping and build a citadel or 
fortress for home protection. In all the 
constellation of heaven renowned celebrity, 
Ursa Major flaunts the widest range of com- 
bative greatness. The shimmering lights 
from her myriad of stars proclaim her power 
to make effulgent her glory of action. Every 
orb hung out to the world possesses the 
key-note to a variety of tunes in the great 
liarmonious scale of activity and promul- 
gation of divine command, that hung a 
weight of glory around this "world that no 
other world possesses, because no other 
world possesses the innate seeds to develope 
through all other worlds, and hang, at last, 
a, key of strength or acknowledgement on 



46 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; OR, 

the throne of ultimate success and ultimate 
supremacy over the devastations of the grov- 
elling monster sin. I do not say that other 
worlds have no honor to sustain above the 
present need of use, but the government of 
some supreme driftings of powerful lustre 
that hang on the cord of love are prelates to 
the cause they represent, scarcely going 
beyond their own orbit, because the egotis- 
tical bearing of some planets surround their 
own gradation seat, and cause the charm of 
variety in planetary system and co-operation 
for divine grandeur and beauty of purpose. 
The planet Mars has a system-house of 
divine workmanship. Her fields of living 
green are staple funds that glow with use in 
the vastness of an eternity in motion. The 
beauty in planetary space follows the round 
of each orbit according to its filial duty of 
design. All planets hang out their flag of 
accountability to the law that governs their 
field of motion. Each planet moves on its 
own axis, or, by its own cohesive strata of 
power, — the seedling of its own accounta- 
bility and worth. God gives to each its 
own, in the outgrowth of planetary concep- 
tion, in the same ratio that individuality in 
humanity's structure receives its stamp-mark 



THE POETRY AND PROSE OF LIFE. 47 

of approval. There is no cheat in God's 
deal, because God is a God of justice, and 
wears his face of approval or disapproval in 
accordance with his laws, which science will 
establish and maintain, as soon as mind can 
receive the props to advantage and wear the 
truth as an honor conferred on the intel- 
lectual ability of the nineteenth century, that 
is moving on the wings of the crested bird, 
whose music will gush through the crus- 
tations of ancient rebeldom. The Grecian 
monarch, whose glory has arisen on every 
outpost of historic lore, would fain have 
grappled for the worlds in space ; but the 
limited knowledge of antiquarian Greece 
bound all their power of usurpation to the 
thraldom temples of earth, and no ancestral 
line, from the Grecian or Romanish cess- 
pool of slavery, has partaken of the beverage 
whose lasting worth has filled the new world 
with the baptismal font that curtails to no 
creed or dries up for want of the living 
stream to surge to its brink of use. 

The creedal system still maintains its 
stronghold of power wherever the yoke of 
ignorance is worn and impelled by dotage 
and sackcloth and ashes antiquity. Rome 
built her fires for the devil's service, and 



48 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE; OR, 

when the night appeared, when no man could 
see, the monster came forth in shape of men, 
wearing the sacerdotal cloth and umpire of 
rule that maintained its sway to the utter 
disregard of justice or right. Rome will one 
day awake to her inability of service, will 
one day acknowledge the injustice of her 
creedal synagogues of power and fiery furn- 
aces of woe, that burned for the honor of 
priestly renown and wisdom of application. 
The Roman pulates were averse to any 
code of moral government that did not com- 
port with their lordly sway of deal, and the 
heterogeneous masses that ever make up 
the bulk of society were mere fledgelings 
with no power to act, and no skill to exact 
power. Thus has Rome grown in bondage 
and servility. It will take the clarion notes 
of some might} 7, attempt to pull down her 
bulwarks of error and pest-houses of fame, 
that have dealt largely to some that others 
might rot in the degredation of their hellish 
systems of feted terror. Rome was mighty 
in her carnage and woe ; but to-day, with 
the light of civilization beaming over the 
world's stricken streams, her glory is cor- 
ruption and her breastplate of honor the 
devil's scabbard, worn for home protection 



THE PKOSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 49 

•and deeds of daring darkness, that fleece her 
coffers of wealth and her humanity of aim, 
or, purpose in life. Thus has Eome become 
a dwindler ; her once sturdy arm has 
become inefficient and ineffectual with her 
present stamp of use, that will find no chan- 
nel open to her investigating touch of deal. 



MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; OR y 



CHAPTER XI. 



Sts^HE Roman Empire is fledged for a 
^)c^ flight to some higher key of motion ; 
|||| ) but it will be a work of time to move 
V her away from her hatching ground, 
and fit her for the enjoyment of a new 
field of labor and consequent worth. The 
Romans are well skilled in the arts and 
sciences, but their old traditionary lore 
serves as their basis from which to rear 
their platform of accountability. I wonder 
at the illiberal spirit maintained where intel- 
lect can master the stubborn facts of God's 
own creating. God is the standard bearer 
to the world; and the color sought for by 
mankind rears its faintest tinge and is» 
brought out to its full glory by the reve- 
lations from the inner temple of man, 
God's soul, so to speak, is the fountain 



THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 51 

where all system finds an entrance and 
takes root in myriads of inland shapings, 
that must be fathomed by the soul element 
in man. God is the root of knowledge, the 
universe, the upheaved tree, whose branches 
have assumed all the varieties that the 
inland seed could sprout. The germ of all 
process lies in the embryotic state until 
mind hurls at it a figure of use. There is in 
every chrysalis of organic matter the pro- 
pelling current, or, the tissue of thought, 
that mounts its own ladder of ascent and 
rears for its own system of use. The mind 
that fashions the rose in all its symmetry 
and beauty, in all its wealth to the touch, 
and in all its splendor of fragrance to the 
soul, could in no way, make the starry but- 
tercup or the distilling bluebell. Each 
effulgent flower-queen that lights up the 
border fields of earth, and awakes to greater 
lustre in the higher cultured fields of living 
beauty, builds from its own monitor and 
mind purpose in God's service. Every 
particle of matter contains the solvent light 
of reason, contains the embryo or intel- 
lectuality, of its own make-up. Mind is as 
diversified in nature and her workings as in 
humanity's broad seal of typical cutlery. 



OZ MAIIIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; OK, 

That breaks no rod of iron will, but serves 
from its own stand point of active energy. 
The growth of the natural universe, or, the 
universe of matter, depends on God's love- 
abiding law in nature, or, the systematic out- 
lav of interior design. The building of the 
earth's templed grandeur has been accom- 
plished by repeated effort and constant, 
energetic movement in elementary forces 
and concert in action. Every board of deal 
or generation of effort has wielded its 
strength in accordance with the outside 
grasp for a more liberal footing and beauty 
of compass in the formalities of earth's fash- 
ion-house. 

The origin of man is hidden in a cave of 
doubt and uncertainty. The old history 
version of man's birth and advent into this 
world from the chaos of God's unstable 
mind is fast loosing its hold on the minds of 
thinking people. That process of construc- 
tion was the easiest to handle by the erudite 
philosophers of ancient theism. It best 
suited the minds of the generation then on 
the field of action. They had no power of 
mind or scope of wisdom to fathom a single 
law, radiating from the God-head of purpose, 
only what could be limited to the outspoken 



THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. b o 

command of a personal God or Savior. It is 
easy enough for mind, at the present day, 
that believes in spirit communion, or believes 
that grains of truth have found their way 
from heaven to earth by some process or 
procedure of conve} T ance ; I say, it is easy 
enough- for such minds to realize how some 
portions of ancient history glow with the 
fervor of truths that cannot be gainsaid or 
lost to the world, because they were given to 
the world as keepsakes, or love tokens, of 
use and beauty, whose lustre can never grow 
dim ; for the rippling voices of angelic wis- 
dom proclaimed the starry gems that 
illuminate the pages of sacred history. 

God's troop of angel guides surround the 
throne eternal, and give as they receive from 
the liberal hand that ever opens at the call 
of need. Angels, at the time when the Bible 
was written, had to deal with crude material, 
had to fashion their grains of truth in 
accordance with the divine sway of com- 
mand, that allows no coercion or impulse to 
drift mankind bej^ond the power of reason's 
grasp of accomplishment; and hence, we find 
Throughout the whole Bible all things in the 
keeping of a personal God, because that 
suited the intellect or mind capacity of 



54 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE; OR, 

attainment, when the world was in its new- 
ness and consequent thraldom. When Plato, 
the world renowned philosopher, lit his torch 
for the world's benefit, the world could not 
accept his theories, because Plato's mind 
reached out beyond the age in which he 
lived. His mind drank in the truths that 
were in advance of his earth career. He 
sprouted the dormant seed for the next 
generation to water and keep green, for time 
to bring to its full fruition of accomplish- 
ment. Every age has had its Plato, or, its 
master mind, that has left the leading strings 
for some other hand to grasp and lead the 
way to higher truths and higher aspirations. 



THE PROSE AND POETEY OF LIFE. 



CHAPTEE XII. 



HH T i s analogous with reason for mankind 
jgy to fashion their starting point in the 
r Qfj8 natural field of labor, as, for instance, 
<^ the growth of any structure must 
depend on its basil text for support. Man 
is but a structure from the law of cause and 
effect. There must have been a necessity 
ior man, else the causes that fashioned his 
outfit and career would never have been 
brought in requisition. Man is as necessary 
to God as God to man ; both dwell in the 
orbit of anterior design. God never fash- 
ioned himself. Had such have been the 
«ase, there must have been a break in the 
system-house of labor. Allow God to 
have been made, and you wrap around him a 
personality that can never fit him, because 



56 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE J OR, 

God dwells in all things ; his compass of 
personality binds hirn to all shapings, ia 
the tiniest footfall of the toddling child we 
hear the voice of God, our father, and along 
the rippling current of some daring deed of 
heroism we hear the impending tread of 
Jehovah's line of march. God so surrounds 
himself that there is no leakage for any 
other power to grasp and call its own. 

" God so surrounds the walls of fate, 
And moves nis inland car so high, 

That all the glories, God await, 
And all the temples reach the sky,. 

And there abound in living worth, 
Each typical of its Godly birth." 

God has so arranged man's platform of 
deal that his harness is fitted at his starting 
point, and he can in no way shuffle it off^ 
for both points of the law affix its stamp- 
mark of defeat or success. The only line 
given us that we can handle to advantage is 
the rein of freedom, that will lengthen or 
contract as we garner for the benefit of 
maintaining study and upright principles.. 
The Lord set a mark upon Cain, lest any 
finding him should slay him ; and thus has. 
God put a mark upon every soul bearing 
figurative affinity to purposes of action;, 



THE PEOSE AND POETP.Y OF LIFE. 57 

and the linger stamp of God's indelible testi- 
mony searches through every portion of our 
being and finds us, whether we be laggards 
around his temple throne of grace or servers, 
waiting at the door of acceptance, — we are 
sure to be found ; for by their fruits shall 
they be known, (and by their deeds shall 
they be accepted); is a scrap worthy to be 
appended to every soul on the highway road 
of life. We are all creedists as far as deeds 
are concerned, or services rendered, to main- 
tain our classified dealings with each other. 
We never go outside of self for motives 
to act from, because self is our basis of 
structure, and maintains its supremacy 
unflinchingly. We garner for self ; we reap 
the benefit of others labor, for self ; we rob, 
steal, murder, for self ; we plant thorns and 
we gather roses to carry out some scheme of 
fostering self to advantage. Every indi- 
vidual acts from his own stand point, or T 
gradation seat, of selfish monopoly. Some 
garner for the outside man to the utter exclu- 
sion of the inner fortress of power, that is 
to take precedence on the road that leads to 
life everlasting. Some pick pearls and 
string them for all future advancement, and 
wear them that their shimmering light may 



58 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE; OR, 

serve to light up the pathway of those stray- 
ing ones found outside of the Christian's 
vineyard of strength. Paul served for the 
monopoly of selfish aim. He was a caterer 
i'or false honors ; a Jesuit, serving God 
through the broad channel made by the 
devil's stride of deal. To say that Paul was 
a sycophant would only be stating a truth ; 
for his mode of deal had a rubber-like basis 
that bounded a backball to himself at every 
•throw on the stage of his eventful career. 
Paul sought an edifice of honor to overthrow 
the Egyptian temples of fame and build 
to the glory of the twelve apostolic strong- 
holds of power. 

The feudal camp-fires of the old world 
sent their smoke and ashes to the next battle 
door of freedom for an entrance where their 
power would yet maintain its sway. The 
old world has been fleeced of its power. 
The egotism and self-delusion that once 
wrapped their prime movers is a trailing 
badge of defect, and the innovations of the 
new world have somewhat disturbed the 
growth of their fancied temples of worth. 
The spirit to build anew, or patch up, the 
t old hedge rows of decaying lustre, is faint 
beside the spirit of truth and liberal Christi- 



THE THOSE AND POETRY OF LITE. 59 

anity, that is pouring its wealth of promise 
around the more modern fields of worship. 
"Truth is mighty and will prevail": and 
modern Christianity is nearing the univer- 
<ecelum of truthful purposes of action. The 
key-note to progress is Truth, and her waving 
folds will yet sweep the earth of prejudice, 
and the scarecrow feet of mythological 
•deception and devil-daring presumption, 
that fleeces all honor away from God and 
man. 



MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; OB, 



CHAPTER XIII. 



[81SNjj®HEN Christ reared his platform of 
>iit'ji% salvation he made the floating bridge 
S^ as broad as possible, that none need 
* be lost for want of safe footing on the 
right side of his holy career. Christ's deeds 
of love are embalmed in the holy precepts 
and examples that hearts, attuned to his 
keeping, set along the rugged road of life- 
Christ has never died to the world. His 
holy mission will be everlasting and ever 
enduring — the rock of ages, whose cleaving- 
will last through all time, and find an anchor- 
seat of pruning on the shores of spirit life- 
Christ is the redeeming hand of mercy, left 
to flourish on the border and hedge rows" of 
earthly experience. Christ came into the 
world to save from sin, by the light his pure 
and loving deeds would shed abroad for 
mankind to be led and governed by. 



THE PEOSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 61 

"His emblematic life of love 

Is passport to the courts above." 

At no period of the world's advancement 
lias Christ been recognized, sustained and 
loved, as now. He is entering on the broad 
field of revolutionizing the world, and he 
heads every outstanding army that is rebel 
to the cause of freedom. Christ maintains 
his sway with easy forbearance, knowing 
that humanity's need will wing its way to 
his throne of generous deal, and also 
knowing the proneness of the human heart to 
search in back paths for the guiding star 
to rear an eminence in the future. Christ's 
key of strength, or, his wide range of influ- 
ence, was in the versatility of his adaptability 
to every harmonious link in the great social, 
political and financial chain that binds the 
brotherhood of man around the altar of duty, 

"That leads beside the Savior's cross, 
An emblem pure, and free from guile," 

And also an emblem, whose majesty of rear- 
ing will ever serve the world as a scaffold of 
pure attainment. How wide has been the 
range of Christ's blood? How deep and 
liow skilful theologians have dipped the err- 
ing ones of earth, and how regardless the 



62 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; OR, 

ceremony of saving ordinance has been of 
any interior change or drifting out of the 
bugbear that travels the world under s©> 
many different guises. 

" And always with a smiling face. 
The man of God keeps even pace. 
And shows for every quaking fear 
A stronghold in his creed so dear, 
That fits around each wayward heart 
That has been called by God apart, 
Or has been changed by faith alone, 
To worship at the creedal throne." 

Ministers of all ages have sought strength 
and popular footing for their system of 
divine favors, tied up and labelled " Ortho- 
doxy," or, Christianity systematized to meet 
the wants of as many as "believe as I 
believe," or, "see as I see," or, "hear the 
voice of conscience through my channel of 
hearing." Some there are who fellowship 
with church organization to save the trouble 
of thinking ; and, by linking themselves with 
a body in the church militant, they are walk- 
ing safely on, without the least trouble of 
looking out ways and means to govern the 
journey. Some there are who step into the 
fold of Christian worship for the ostensible- 
purpose of having the world know that 



THE PROSE AND POETKY OF LIFE. 63 

through the atoning blood of Christ they 
have been brought to the mercy seat of God \ 
but from any outward symbol of change we 
might think it was all a farce, and the church 
was cheating God of his true worshippers. 
I wonder at the idiosyncrasies in human 
nature ; I wonder at man's plan of deal with 
God ; his cunning and subtile way of cheating 
his own conscience, and offering God the 
pottage for which he has sold his birthright, 
I wonder at man's inability to grasp the 
true Savior, or, the true lover of salvation, 
that would uproot the errors that cling to his 
citadel of strength and clog up the avenues 
leading to the true Messiah, that is ever 
stationed within our interior keeping. Christ 
is the mark set for our attainment ; and the 
guiding monitor on the angel side of our 
being ever points to the radiance flowing 
from his pure life, and offering us a chance 
beside the silvery stream of duty to flourish 
a cross whereon shall be inscribed, " bear ye 
one another's burdens." And what more 
beautiful in sentiment or expression than 
those few words so fraught with hope and 
comfort to the human heart? Nothing so 
ennobles humanity as the thought and care 
put forth for another's welfare, — as the love 



64 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; OR, 

expressed in deeds of mercy and benevolent 
intention. That spirit of sustaining help has 
fashioned the world in all its charming 
variety of improvements and in all its classi- 
cal growth of culture and refinement. Christ 
lit his taper with love, and humanity caught 
the effulgent rays to light up their platform 
of movement. Without love the world could 
not exist, because love, or, harmony, which 
signifies love, is the pivot on which the world 
turns in motionary evolution. Love is the 
permeating fluid that tones all nature with 
the aroma of success. Love is the balance 
wheel that acts on the graded road of life, 
and turns on its own axis of accomplishment 
to further some other scheme of royal 
purport, or, daring adventure, for the out- 
standing cause of freedom. Love is no 
trifler, although his coy wings are dipped in 
all the pools of life ; and beside the stagnant 
water of uncertainty and doubt he flings a 
silver dart of hope to ripple in the undercur- 
rent and brings to its brink some token of 
use. If love gushes through our souls we 
have heard the voice of God speaking from 
the hill top, or the mount of transfiguration. 
And if we heed the voice, and send an echo- 
ing response in some outspoken deed of 



THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 65 

charitable import, then has God acknowl- 
edged our worth and given us a seat in the 
kingdom of heaven. But if, on the other 
hand, we hear the voice of God, and our 
heart lights up with no answering echo, no 
response given to his call for help beside the 
stricken streams of life, and no sense of 
gratitude expressed for the comforts sur- 
rounding our homes on earth, can we then, 
in neglecting to respond to God's call, lift 
our hearts to his throne of grace and tri- 
umphant love with the meekness of " thy 
will be done on earth, even as it is done in 
heaven " ? Can we take that prayer of 
sanctification as lip-service and feel our- 
selves the chosen ones of God, feel that we 
merit his voice of approval when our con- 
science is truant to the cause we represent ? 
Oh ! the hollo wness and mockery of charade 
acting in real life. It sickens and disgusts a 
soul of true refinement and sensibility. 



MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE; OR,. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

ftp HEIST came on earth, in Bible version, 
'^y to save sinners. Are we then to sup- 
^If P ose that prior to Christ's coming God 
y made no provision for the sinner, that 
an after consideration gave birth to th& 
thought that his first plan could be improved 
upon? that he had made a mistake in the 
formula of his first design ? that Christ could 
help to fashion a better system, whereby all 
could be led to the altar of salvation ? Is 
not that allowing by God's written testimony 
that he was liable to change ? That in who- 
ever and in whatever he needed help, there 
he should make the demand. And does 
not God verify that past assertion by every 
call he makes on humanity to enlarge the 
sphere of usefulness by liberalizing their 
spirit of deal, and putting out the hand of 



THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 67 

God's voice recognized in the demand ? 

" God ne'er deceives. His wondrous voice 
Proclaims its power; and we, in listening 
To its spell, find true enchantment 
There doth dwell." 

Then we doubt the voice of God ; we 
doubt the uprightness of our own being ; we 
doubt our capacity to perform a loving act, 
and thus doubting, we harden to the reality 
of the doubt, and become niggards and 
misers around a board spread by the loving 
heart and hand of God. Christ spread his 
table for all, else he never could have served 
God, because God will have all brought unto 
the knowledge of the truth in his own good 
time. Christ sprouted the seeds implanted 
in the bulwarks of God's sustaining strength 
and love. Christ was the effulgent ray 
floated to the world in her hour of 
dark despair. Christ stood in the old 
world, a miraculous interposition of Provi- 
dence, a negotiator between heaven and 
earth, a silver cord dropped to the world by 
the right hand of God. But to-day, with 
the light of Christianity beaming over the 
face of God's earth and lighting up the 
darkened intellect of man, Christ assumes 



68 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; QB, 

Ills standard worth, and the purpose of his 
mission is being recognized and labelled on 
the heart, and taken to the inner sanctuary 
of the soul as a test-mark of strength or a 
badge of honor that we cannot wear in truth 
to our mode of outside deal. In this nine- 
teenth century God is listening for the 
broad shout that shall proclaim Christ 
understood, brought to the platform of 
national honor, and taken to the hearth- 
stone and fireside of every social altar that 
rears a keeping in the land. Christ's mis^ 
sion must be fully understood in order to be 
fully believed, and must be fully believed in 
order to work any improvement, or liberal 
change, beside our stream of life. Christ's 
whole character is glowing with beautiful 
attributes of service to the world, and we 
have only to make a choice of which key or 
how many keys in the grand scale shall lead 
us out to the exemplified harmonious con- 
dition of Christ- We, as one grand body, or 
army, are marching to the battlements of 
salvation, and should have our journey rear 
for us a seat of eminent worth. Then will 
our earth career light up our whole future 
course of action and guide us to the mercy 
seat of God. " For as many as come I will 



THE THOSE AND POETEY OF LIFE. 69 

in no way cast off, saith the Lord my God." 
Christ in his eminent worth laid the foun- 
dation for a world of great beauty and 
compass of design. Christ saw the end 
from the beginning, saw the worth and 
power of man's interior ability, saw the 
great scope in God's outstanding worlds for 
mind to range through and gather for the 
great system-house of God's own plan. 
Christ saw God's need of help invested in 
man. Therefore, Christ took the broadest 
basis at his command for liberty, and made 
the underpinning to every movement fast by 
the bond of love. Christ understood the 
worth of that principle to the human heart, 
understood that it would be the pivot on 
which the whole social world would turn in 
its evolutions of reform, understood that love 
was God's watchword of call to every soul 
on the journey of life, and understood the 
strength, power and capability of that one 
little word, that fills the soul with the holiest 
aspirations and the heart with the divinest 
acts of benevolence and mercy. Let love 
preside beside our daily walks ; let love be 
our motto of sustaining strength and let love 
be our shield against the temptations of the 
sinful man that walks beside our wandering 



70 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; OK, 

footsteps, ever ready to lead us away from 
our hoisied flag of trust, and ever ready 
with the words Self and Gain to shipwreck 
our freight of love, and leave us with hardly 
a seed of promise to sprout a Christian 
Mfe. 



THE THOSE AND POETRY OF LITE. 



CHAPTER XV. 



f,N giving Marigolds by the Wayside to 
the world, I am preparing humanity 
1^3 for a step in the fields of scientific 
"? exploration, a field wherein all should 
garner for the kingdom of use. Science is 
the height, breadth and depth of an out- 
wrought purpose or design ; the shaping of a 
thing made ; the fashion or style of any 
given structure, let that structure be God, 
man, or the devil, in outwrought model, it 
must have a scientific basis of formation, 
the whys and wherefores of construction, the 
indwelling, paramount reason for existing, 
and existing in the form put forth. Science 
5s the broadest scope yet given to mankind 
whereby mysteries can become soluble to 
mind, whereby facts can be established and 
mythical dealing done away with, a stampede 
movement given to all rubbish that does not 



72 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE; OK, 

comport with reason's torchlight of investi- 
gation. Science is on the hunter's track ; 
and the dogs at bay, or, the outstanding 
scouts of opposition, will stand but a poor 
chance for bagging in any section where free 
institutions for education and liberalization 
have become a paramount feature in govern- 
mental discipline. Education is the world's 
sifting machine, and through that process is 
the world becoming wise in its own good time. 
Science will uphold every truth that edu- 
cation brings to the rostrum for investigation, 
because truth is a staple article and cannot 
be gainsaid or thrust out of existence. It 
may be set aside for future use or toning up 
to meet an emergent case of doubtful 
authority, but cannot be lost to the world's 
view. At sometime, and, seemingly, when 
most needed, truth ever makes her appear- 
ance, and, with the spirit of defiant skill, 
removes all obstacles shadowing her smiling 
face. Truth ever stands in the background 
of error, willing to give error precedence on a 
track outlasting time and reaching to the 
fountain head of every streamlet, or river 
flow of knowledge, that picks its way to the 
understanding of man. The infancy of mind 
will no longer be the mighty barrier to drown 



THE THOSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 73 

the voice of freedom's call. The stone has 
been removed from the mouth of the sepul- 
chre, and the chanting voice from the mighty 
dead will proclaim the heathen world the ark 
wherein no safety can be found and wherein 
no knowledge can be obtained. 

The heathen world, or black mail of 
knowledge, has long since lost its charm 
for me. I have done picking in history for 
truths to garnish my store of accumulated 
treasure. I have done with mankind as a 
basis for all truth, or, as a basis from which 
to rear a temple whose crowning worth shall 
be a star, or gleaming light, to guide the 
erring ones of earth along their uneven des- 
tiny of motion, and along a journey freighted 
with keepings for God's kingdom-house of 
eternity. My journeyings will ever be on the 
line of progressive research. I shall cause 
earth by repeated effort, to disburse her 
bank stock of scientific keepings, and give to 
the world as I shall find time to sift and pre- 
pare the grains of truth from the chaff which 
is ever in attendance, and serves its purpose 
by concealing the pearls until mankind are 
ready for the glittering diadem to be bound 
around the brow and heart, and treasured as 
a panacea of sustaining strength forever and... 



r ,74 MAHIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE; OR, 

lorever. Let truth take hold of heart and 
soul. Let God's merciful plan towards his 
children be sought and fully comprehended, 
and let the welkin ring of joy fill the air, 
iifchat angels who are ever near may catch the 
silver chimes and carry them as a feast of 
Jatlings to the hearts awaiting at the portals 
-of eternity to be understood and loved as of 
yore. Oh, the mercy displayed in God's 
great and glorious plan of salvation ! Who 
Ibut disembodied mortals can comprehend 
the beauty of the change called Death, the 
hallo wedn ess and sacredness of an entrance 
ton the untried fields of spirit life ? Who but 
disembodied, mortals cm tell of the glories 
that await the unredeemed of earth ? Who 
•can picture so well as those who have seen 
ithe reality and lived face to face with the 
beauty of this great truth ; and lived, soul 
answering soul, by the solemn compact made 
Vbetween God and man, and kept sacred until 
man himself could proclaim unto his brother 
.man the sublime pathos of God's voice of 
Hove, when speaking from the hill top 
;of Sinia, through the wisdom of angel mess- 
ages, that have ever kept God's throne 
;-sacred and beyond any dividing line of 
udoubt. Doubt is the door of darkness, 



THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 75 

through which mankind must pass to the full 
light of actual experience. Doubt sits beside 
our homes on earth, a grim scarecrow, feed- 
ing on the refuse of past generations, and 
ever digging backwards into a hole of dis- 
content, that offers no peace or permanence 
of position, whereby the soul can gather 
strength for repeated investigation. Doubt 
is a harness that is always out of repair, 
never ready for use or actual demonstration, 
but hanging idly on the shoulders of the 
foolish, or, unwise Samaritan or Sadducee of 
present or past history in the world. 

" Doubt digs a grave of wondrous width. 
But rarely scans a field for gain, 
Lest chance might throw a skilful hook 
And find the truth-; bv doubt disclaimed." 



MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE : OR. 



CHAPTER XVI. 



/r>>HERE is no skill so great as digging im 
^/^ cast off rubbish for seeds to maintain 
^Jp illiberal sentiments, and sprout theories. 
"S that cannot exist by the light of rea- 
son's sway; because reason is the key-note- 
on which God times the harmony of success, 
and on which he plays for the advancement 
of each and every soul bearing the lever of 
thought to systematize what God gives in 
abstract ideas. God has harnessed us with 
an individuality entirely our own, and we 
have a work to do with that purpose of 
God's formation. We cannot shirk our indi- 
vidulization. It clings to us with a tenacity 
of will that sets at defiance any skill over our 
maintainance of natural keepsakes from the 
hand of God. What is nature with us will 
always cling to us, because that is the God 
within us, the imperishable seed rooted when. 



THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 77 

God purposed our existence and career. 
When God breathed into man the breath 
•of life, and man became a living soul, — a 
monument of strength, with an anterior 
purpose existing around every loop-hole of 
individuality. We cannot escape the mark 
;set upon Cain, — it is branded for all time 
-and sticks its pin of claim around, above and 
below our outspoken effort of attainment. 
We can no more move outside of our own 
orbit of motion, with success to ourselves, 
than can planetary evolution take place out- 
side of its own given line of march, for God 
is our propelling wheel, turning on the axis 
of his own free will and pleasure. God 
motions our destiny to us by signs set in the 
foreground of our experience, and the turn- 
ing hand of fate points the road for onr 
wayward feet to travel in. We have no free 
will outside of God's free will, for if we 
moved different from what we do move, 
we should be different individuals, and God 
would never be sure of his own, and the 
law of recompense never called to actual 
•demonstration. 



"For by God's law and will divine, 
All nature reaches the sublime." 



78 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; Oil, 

Is it right, then, for sin to tear through our- 
natures, that the law of recompense be 
called to actual service ? Is it right for sim 
to abound, that good may much more 
abound '? Is it right for God and the devil 
to enter into partnership for the salvation or 
destruction of machines that had no hand in 
their own building? I ask, is it right to set 
man afloat a sham power, ready for the pick- 
ing hand of Satan to flourish before a just 
God's attempt at supreme rule ? 

When man flourishes creeds before the 
world he allows God but half a share of the- 
proceeds that he sent his son to gather in 
full, making his plan a failure and himself 
unreliable for the world's service, and man 
incompetent to judge between the false and 
true, or the good and evil, in social life, — 
for social life is the mainspring of man's 
ultimate destiny. It is in social intercourse^ 
that the heart gathers strength, and the soul 
blooms with verdure that ripens to advan- 
tage in the kingdom of heaven. It is in 
social intercourse that we lay the foundation 
for grasping magnetic strength and fervor of 
accumulation. Social intercourse opens the 
love fountain of our natures, sifts the bread 
of life throughout our whole being, and wafts^ 



THE POETRY AND PBOSE OF LIFE. 79'' 

the angelic tune of harmony beside our 
every day walks, and beside the feudal camp 
of political and financial warfare and strife of 
party colors and party legislative bickerings 
that offer no good to any system that serves 
a national board of honor. The American 
legislative grandeur of conception could not 
be surpassed on the earth formula of design. 
It has a broad sweep against any nationality 
of invasion. Its birthright gift is freedom ; , 
and that spirit is extended throughout the 
length and breadth of the Christian world. 
That spirit is her nationality of success, her 
glorious star of promise that never must 
grow dim, — for freedom is God's watchful 
eye that ever surrounds any outreach of 
principle, or destiny of effort, on the part 
of man. Freedom cherishes the bond that 
makes all men brothers, and unites them to a 
purpose of active duty in the broad held of 
primitive labor and toil. Freedom cherishes 
the evangelical platform of deal, by doing 
unto others as ye would that others 
should do unto you. When we can do 
that we have taken up every cross and 
strewn our walks with roses, that send out 
their fragrance at every crushing footfall 
of time. How easy it is to make hearts 



80 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; OR, 

glad, to send a boon of pleasure where we 
oft-times fill the soul with pain and pierce the 
temple of confidence with the barbed arrow, 
whose pointed thrust lays low its strength of 
appeal and outgushing beauty of freedom 
and love. 



THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 



CHAPTEK XVII. 

^?>>^HE mainspring of action in freedom's 
^})(£ line of march is the internal lever that 
"Qj)8 uproots all theories, or olden insti- 
~0 L tutions, that have become leaky or 
unsafe from non-use or corrupt fraternizing 
of their social elements of power. What 
mankind are willing and ready to take is 
freedom's aim to legalize to their foot- 
ing of acceptability. Freedom ignores all 
restraint not compatible with growth or rea- 
son's sway of deal, that is ever searching for 
means to widen the old hedgerow of oppres- 
sion. Man easily learns to sail outside the 
beaten track of ancestral sprouting ; early 
learns that the game of cribbage can be 
widened at its base and admit the spectator 
to the board of shuffle and deal that offers 
so much employment and amusement to the 
capitalists around the board of play. Old 
Johnny Bull may wink and spout, and 
try his utmost to find out the whys and 



82 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; OK, 

wherefores of the bagging process that i® 
enacted around the American field of honest 
labor, and around the American field where* 
honest accumulation ever meets the voice of 
approval and wears the smiling face of con- 
tent. Is it because the spirit of the old 
world has crept into the American nest of 
reputed freedom and hatched an egg of dis- 
content, that is to destroy the basis, or 
principle that underlies the system of honest 
toil which is assuming a non-committal 
appearance, that bespeaks little freedom ins 
systematized effort to make the weak more 
strong and build a fortification that shalL 
ensure safety to all classes and grades of 
civilization, that throng around the American, 
footstool of labored enterprise, that, untram- 
meled by the false spirit of pride, would be 
the national badge of honor to be worn by 
any country with success to its growth of 
power and liberty of expression ? Am erica, 
has a broader basis of liberty than any other 
country ; and yet there seems to be a tighten- 
ing up of the aristocratic line of social 
encounter, and a disposition asserts itself of 
making patchwork of every person's private 
history not labelled to the world by the-' 
stamp -mark of gold. 



THE PROSE AND POETEY OF LIFE. 85- 

As I survey earth from my spiritual 
locality I see how utterly worthless is the 
tribute paid to wealth, how little claim it, 
has at the fouutain of worth to which man- 
kind are all hastening. God never designed 
wealth as an object in life. We must have 
an object paramount to its accumulation, else 
we are idolators to the golden glitter of 
earth's staple article of mischief. Wealth, 
or the love of wealth, when rightly directed, 
is accessory to the maintainance and carry- 
ing out of plans necessary to the world's 
improvement and growth in institutional and 
classical reforms. Wealth should never be 
worn as a badge of honor, lest it trail the 
soul in the dust and cause a blindness to 
creep over our mental vision, worse than 
the wind sweeps or simoon whisperings to the. 
parched-up surface of Arabia's climes. 

" Wealth hid, kept, or stole away, 
Is good for nought but devil's prey." 

When the soul wanders out in search of 
gold there should be a motive anterior to 
the desire of accumulation, and that motive 
should be wound around some purpose for 
the soul's improvement and growth. If the 
soul accumulates merely to garnish its body- 



84 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; OK, 

liouse of clay, where is the staple fund for 
future use, when the body has taken part 
with its element of earth ? Where are the 
tokens of earth's mission of labor when body 
and soul have made a final separation, and 
the body, so cared for, sinks to its home of 
rest, leaving the soul a wanderer still, but 
bereft of purpose or activity to finish a life 
that commenced with a basil motive fixed in 
earth? Oh, the degradation and hollow- 
ness of a life spent on its foundation site, 
with no star of hope pointing to the world of 
illumination, whose lustrous truths are light- 
ing up the by-paths of earth and causing the 
spirit of uneasiness to float round the soul's 
temple of ease and earthly immolation ! Oh, 
the grandeur and beauty of living for heaven 
while yet on the earth, of living in daily com- 
munion with God while we are serving the 
earthly purposes for which he designed us 
and for which he gives us daily assurance, if 
we but open our hearts in the direction 
of his holy sanctuary of peace ! God offers 
us wisdom, offers us the light of divine 
revealment, if we but open our door of 
understanding and reach for the things that 
pass not away, but have hold on life eternal. 



TPIE PROSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 



CHAPTEE XVIII. 



>'{"& OD winds our purpose around us at the 

yiJ: til . . 

§w| beginning of our life of responsibility,. 
^I 2 and we are fitted with machinery ade- 
"e ( quate to the demand made on our 
strength. We cannot go outside of our own 
locomotive force, either in the office of brain 
work or the car of bone and sinew develop- 
ment. God never asks an impossibility of 
us. He ever keeps his demand within the 
pale of our gifts, but asking us, with lover- 
like devotion, for the fulfilment of the 
outstanding promise that our will and 
energetic effort are capable of holding true. 
Where there's a will there is a way, is an 
old and trite saying, but nevertheless true, 
and if carried the oftener into practice, the 
spirit world would receive less half-fledged 



86 MAKIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; OK, 

souls than it does at present. Man's wisdom 
lies in his strength of accomplishment, in his 
willingness and activity of zeal to fill the 
circle marked out for his glory of achieve- 
ment. Man, in order to fill both measures 
of his individualization, should harness his 
team double, must have his services ren- 
derered on earth mingle to advantage in the 
formation of his spiritual career, or life of 
onward harmony or discord ; for, as we spin 
and reel our yarn it mingles in the fabric of 
use or becomes a tangled skein unfit for any 
real service. There is a class of minds that 
float along through life with no particular 
•aim or wish to gratify, outside the keeping of 
•earthly surroundings. Such minds rarely 
drink at the fountain of knowledge. Their 
-stand point of accumulation has no basis 
depth on which to rear a social foundation 
that can, in any way, improve other minds 
that frequently come in contact with them. 
It should be the aim of every individual to 
throw out a focus of light sufficient to guide 
some other traveller who may be wandering 
in darkness and error, waiting for a glimmer 
of knowledge to light the way to a happier 
position, which they feel could be obtained, 
and„ with a little li<?ht given, the future would 



THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 87 

•seem less cheerless. Why is it that we do 
not seek each other's happiness more ? Why 
do we leave the lever of love and friendship 
to rust in the soil of pernicious selfishness, 
making us cold and unfeeling, unsocial and 
unlovable? The extended hand of friend- 
ship has saved many an erring one from 
.sinking to the bottomless pit of despair, and 
liow many more who are wrecked on the bil- 
lows of time could have been saved, and 
their lives garnished with the flower of hope, 
had some kind heart shot into their souls the 
arrow of sympathy, whose quivering touch 
-changes the whole course of wrong doing in 
the penitent receiver. We cannot have too 
much sympathy. It is God's motive power 
•of active duty. It braces the heart and 
sheds the glorious light of God's favor 
around our pathway of loving help to each 
other. God notes the falling of the sparrow, 
notes the roar and sweep of old ocean's 
grandest moods, notes the wayward, truant 
heart sealed to the purpose of destruction, 
and notes the illiberal hand and heart that 
move not at the call for help to wind around 
their stronghold of error, and lift them from 
the degradation and misery that is fast 
creeping around them. There is no blind- 



88 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; OR, 

ness on God's part, or failing to see the 
battles fought and victory won, the lost 
restored, the weak strengthened, and the good 
made happy, by the reflection of the sunlight- 
shed around the desolate homes of earth. 
Oh, the beauty of doing good ! The glory 
of achievement to the soul that starts out on 
a mission of mercy ! The angels in heaven 
bow with reverence, and the hushed voice of 
smiling content rests over the new Jerusa- 
lem, for therein is seen the breastwork to a 
grand scheme in life, and therein is witnessed 
Jehovah's call on a redeemed soul to come to 
the marriage feast prepared for those that 
serve God. For the bride and the groom 
say come, and all nature drinks in the spirit 
of joy over the Christian's act of mingled 
charity and love. Christ could do no more 
than to do good. His miracles had good- 
ness for a basis of performance, and his 
every deed done for humanity was radiant 
with the spirit of goodness. That prin- 
ciple interlaced his every movement and 
crowned his every effort and made him a 
successful financier around the heart of 
human needs. Christ crowned his every 
effort with the starry emblem of brotherly 
love and humane sympathy. That spirit is. 



THE PROSE AND P0ET11Y OF LIFE. 89 

worthy of the highest cultivation. It made 
Christ divine, and restored him in all his 
primitive beauty to the glorified seat beside 
his father's throne of mercy. Mankind only 
need the spirit of goodness interlaced in all 
the business transactions of time, and rooted 
in every effort to advance freedom and pro- 
mote the growth and well-being of sectional 
communities that are scattered throughout 
the length and breadth of civilization. I 
well remember, in travelling my round of 
earthly duties, that the spirit of goodness 
and Christ-like purity of purpose was the 
oftener met beside the hearthstone of the 
non-possessor of wealth and opulence of 
bearing to the world. I have seen the hand 
of poverty extended with its widow's mite 
and a smile of accompaniment that would 
grace an angel's brow. And I have seen the 
hand of wealth put forth to succor the needy 
with a grimace or abstract air that told of no 
heart-work or sj^mpathy for the oppressed of 
poverty. And I have wondered if of such 
were the kingdom of heaven ; and, if the 
kingdom of heaven sprouted no wealth of 
earthly lustre, where was the leading strings 
to their enjoyment, where the basis ground 
for ultimate happiness. Oh, ye careless and 



DO MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE; OR, 

wicked ones of earth, why not live Christ 
and him crucified ? Why not forego some of 
the scarlet of worldly pleasures that burn 
and scar the soul, making God seem afar off 
.and Christ a Savior of mythical bearing. 



THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 



CHAPTEK XIX. 

^>-^HE world lias been wrought on by 
HyS^ every system of oppression. No free 
^Qjj^? torch has been allowed to burn. The 
<j target of defamation has been hurled 
from the pulpit and every rostrum upheaved 
to foster indolence and selfish principality of 
power. This mock heroism, or Herodism, is 
disgusting and sickening to a soul capable of 
finding worth outside of the world's pomp 
and glitter, — outside of her charnel-house 
of ostentatious merit. When we in spirit 
life look the matter of earth's showy plat- 
form of Christian worship in the face, and 
note its inefficiency of subduing pride or 
weaving the spirit of Christ into its network 
of use, we cavil at the soundness of theo- 
logical hyperbole, or witchcraft, that travels 
the world for the ultra purpose of harnessing 
a team for the devil to drive, and furnishing 



92 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE; OR, 

the necessary accoutrements to please gen- 
teel society. We in spirit life wonder at the 
earth's fabrication of such showy material 
whereby to evince a change of heart or pur- 
pose to the world ; and we wonder at the 
illiberal spirit maintained in the Christian 
fold, wonder at the allegorical representation 
of Christ as being believed in this age of wis- 
dom of opinion. The atoning blood of Christ 
never yet washed away the robe of sin, never- 
sprouted so much as a seed in a garden field 
of good works to mankind, never illuminated 
the heart with a single ray of benevolent 
intention, never cheered the soul with the 
promise of life everlasting, and never was spilt. 
to redeem mortality. I would say that in 
the face of ten thousand worlds, and meet the 
cudgel of disapproval with a gun discharge 
of truth, aimed at every evangelical temple 
of defamation that spouts forth its hollow 
mockery, and has a drop curtain that shuts, 
out every ray of divine truth from the minds, 
of those waiting at the portals of earthly 
knowledge for light to cheer their onward 
march. 

How deft and cunning is priestcraft ! How- 
broad its sweep to evangelize the world I 
How magnificent in detail to pardon the sLra. 



THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. i'o 

spotted of earth, and how horrified to find 
the blazing star of guilt under their covered 
sanctuary of repose. It is like a galvanic 
battery on weakened nerves, or, a palsied 
foot to a sprig of the law, and, I might say, 
like the serpent in the garden of Eden. The 
serpent, however, had no one to outwit in 
-gaining his privileges of honor. He must 
have been allowed of God to mingle with the 
pure, else how came he in that retreat so 
sacred to harmony without knowledge. The 
•church may be likened unto the garden of 
Eden, and priestcraft the flaming sword that 
turns every way, to ensure safety to the tree 
of knowledge planted in the soul garden of 
every individual, and sometimes needing the 
serpent's sting to awaken from its dormant 
•condition and clothe itself with raiment 
suited to its need and purpose. According 
to historical evidence, Eve was dissatisfied, 
and willing to listen to the serpent, willing to 
be beguiled or interested from the blank 
monotony of her surroundings. So, fair 
Eve found by eating she could see, could 
•distinguish good from evil, and straightway 
imparted the knowledge to Adam, therein 
showing man's proclivity to be taught by 
woman and showing woman's skill in j)rob- 



94 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE J OR, 

ing secret institutions of power. Woman's; 
field of usefulness has of late years been a, 
libel on her page of illustrated worth, that 
hangs before the world, a covenant made 
luminous by effort, deed, love, hope and 
charity, mingled in her breastplate worn for 
the benefit of humanity. Woman must yet 
bring her team of use to be acknowledged 
from the stand point of intellectual ability,, 
must cope with man in the field of literature 
and science, and use her key of speculation 
to ingraft womanhood with the principle of 
financiering ability, thus doubling her capaci- 
ties and fitting her to be self-sustaining and 
independent of man's arm of help, which 
oft-times proves a curse, leaving her moral 
nature trailing in the dust and mirage of 
earth. 

My purpose is not here to show woman's 
broad field of duty ; what she can, will and 
must accomplish by overt, independent, free- 
thinking, free-acting ability. The reins are 
gradually nearing her grasp, whereby she 
can step to the rescue of womanhood and 
bring forth the dormant principles from her 
casket of strength to be even-handed with 
man, poised for an encounter with the stem 
facts of life. I intend to build a fort ress of 



THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 95 

strength to support woman in the arduous 
duties consequent to her obtaining her true 
position in life. I intend to harness the 
lady now under my control with a life-lease 
of my individuality, and proclaim from the 
rostrum or pulpit, if allowed, the full and 
detailed advantages of female suffrage to the 
world. I intend to put the key of strength 
in her hands to be used the following spring, 
or as soon as May, 1871, and, until that 
time arrives, shall make good my promise of 
sending her to California to drink the balmy 
softness of her sunny clime. I have been 
canvassing the matter in spirit realms of 
starting a paper in San Francisco, entitled 
"The Theological Chip Basket," and I find 
that some of the leading minds in my sphere 
of advancement are ready and willing to 
advance their mite of knowledge to start 
earth out on a surer footing of salvation than 
she now possesses. Some of the leading- 
minds around my perch of glory would con- 
tribute from ancient history, which has 
undergone a process of purification, or of 
sifting, which has separated the wheat from 
the chaff, and, by dropping the wheat on 
earth in its purified condition, it may assume 
its relative value and become a staple arti- 



96 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE j OR, 

cle, to be promulgated by theologians who 
wish to use the white bread of truth in 
preference to the brown bread of error. 
There are other minds here who will give 
facts from travels in higher localities, and 
also in the lower grades of social life and 
bearing to the world they inhabit. Alto- 
gether, it will be a paper of interest and 
relative worth to mankind. The reason of 
my introducing my paper in this book is to 
somewhat advertise it and prepare the pub- 
lic for its advent, which will, I think, be in 
July or August. The great Irish tragedian 
always announced his plays several weeks in 
advance of their peformanee, to ensure a 
successful house and give Bon Vivant to the 
play. 



THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 



CHAPTER XX. 

<§®N Baxter's Saints' Rest is a passage, 
gjj) which, I think, nearly compor ts with 
¥$& Schiller's fearful wail over the lost ones 
"^ of earth. Schiller and Baxter both 
drank from God's high pressure-house of 
wrath, and folded their hearts and hands com- 
placently over their works inspired by their 
belief. The world is now playing dodge 
with those olden authors, who burnished 
their works with God's implacable enmity 
and wrath. Baxter headed his puffs and 
tit-bits of savory knowledge by the flaming 
sword, made keen and sure by God's prom- 
ise laid down in Holy Writ and revealed to 
men on earth who could drink truth and 
beauty from a God of such glowing attri- 
butes of power. 

How God has softened in his feelings 
7 



98 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; OR, 

towards humanity ! How lie lias allowed the 
church to become liberalized ! How sorry he 
must have been to acknowledge his error 
in so broad and harmonious a manner, to 
allow the sheep and goats to travel out on 
the road of progress together, to drink at the 
same fountain and be fed by the same liberal 
hand of mercy ! Oh, God, I thank thee for 
thy change of heart, for the change thou 
hast made around thy great pool of sal- 
vation. And, oh, God, I thank thee for thy 
wondrous storehouse of knowledge, for the 
variety expressed in thy kingdom-house of 
use. And, oh, God, for the perceptive facul- 
ties in man, I bow in reverence before thy 
throne of universal keepsakes, ready to be 
distributed when mind calls for its own, and 
thou, oh, God, art conditioned to give in full 
to the glory of the Lamb which is in Christ 
Jesus. 



THE PEOSE AXD POETilY OF LIFE. 



CHAPTER XXI. 



$J\jV;£>HEN God created man, lie made him 
g$sf$j from the dust of the earth and 
^if-f breathed into his nostrils the breath 
* of life, and man became a living soul. 
The Bible has never stated by what process 
God fashioned man from the earth, Avhether 
it was systematic outreach on God's part or 
a combined process or elementary activity, 
called into operation at God's word of com- 
mand. It seems to me that were God a 
personality, capable of knoAving and capable 
of telling all things, he would have revealed 
to man the origin of his birth, and not have 
left that all important matter a subject for so 
much speculation. I suppose some would 
say God knew best in what condition to leave 
man, and we should not speculate on God's 
ways, for they are past finding out. But, 
by some process or hocus-pocus of God's 



100 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; OE, 

will, the truth is leaking through its nest 
of rubbish, and man is coming to the knowl- 
edge of his birth-hour in matter. God 
fashioned man from the exigency of an out- 
side want in nature. If we go back to chaos 
we will find, interlaced in her roomy recep- 
tacles, the finesse dictum, or seedling, which 
has reared, or grown, man to his present 
condition in life. As it is spiritualistic 
movement in matter that gyrates to the 
course of time, we may well suppose that 
when spirit has done with the matter it 
forms, it hays it away, for other combined 
forces to operate upon, and takes on a 
higher grade of bearing, distinguishable to 
the next locality in progress. First, the 
seedling, then the graft, and then the spirit 
of the full grown apple, which ripens and is 
sent on earth to propagate new species and 
in a higher state of cultivation. And so we 
might say with regard to man. He is first 
but a seedling, until the ingrafting of God's 
scientific plan commences, and then he is 
reared for propagating through the natural 
functions of animal law. But what we most 
wish made clear to the mind is, at what point 
in matter spirit undertakes to master crude 
material ; at what point matter assumes 



THE PEOSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 101 

capacity or research to move on independent 
principle. 

Geologians have sifted earth to find the 
key-note to intellectuality, but have never 
found the blazing star shot at one particular 
element composing the vice-royalty of earth. 
Are we, then, to conclude that God has so 
far hid the basis of being that mind can 
never ferret the truth from the depth of his 
almighty kept-house of knowledge, and so 
lay idly on our oars, waiting for the tide to 
drift us to the promised land of safety, with 
no more knowledge of the principle of navi- 
gation than Avhen we started our life boat of 
ease ? God forbid that we should be drifters 
throughout the course of time, and enter on 
the untried fields of spirit life with clipped 
wings and banners flapping idly by our sides. 
God wrought man out of confusion : now let 
us bring reason to the rostrum, or, in other 
words, let us use reason instead of any per- 
sonal God, for I contend that man's reason 
is his God personified within himself, and 
any other God that his God appeals to is the 
interior financiering element or elements in 
nature. I do not say this interior power 
in nature is not comprehensive, all-wise and 
benevolent in intents and purposes, but I do 



102 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE; OR, 

say, this comprehensive power uses the lever 
of law in every detail or niinntia of labor, 
and picks its strength of accomplishment 
from system laid down in the start of chaotic 
building. God's chaotic-house of. fire and 
water mingled its crater of strength for the- 
spasmodic outlay of earth, and when earth 
assumed a spheroid shape, the soil was lava 
with large tracts of water, broadcast and 
free, swaying the molten lava like a lever of 
use in God's hand of mighty architecture. 
As time crept along on the wing of God's 
law, water had done noble duty and lava 
showed it had not been appealed to in vain, 
What had once been a mass of molten ruin 
was coming into the traces, to be wrought 
on by cause and effect. I do not mean to 
say that the law of cause and effect was not 
anterior to the birth of the world, but I am 
bringing it to the point of use in matter 
where mind can comprehend its instigation 
and merit of appeal. As lava became strati- 
fied it began to show its particles of worth, 
began to show its attributes in financiering 
ability, and show how much Saturn had 
entailed her precepts and examples into the 
brain receptacles of her child thrown from 
her crater of benevolent intention. Some 



THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 103 

will ask what is this, inlaid principle running 
through all worlds that acts in the right 
time and place ? Is it God ? Is it mind 
superior to mind in man, or is it chance- 
work from beginning to end, or chance- 
system wrought on by an internal revenue 
fund, or a tax-gatherer working for the 
benefit of outwrought principle ? There is 
no power of mind so grand as nature, and if 
God be apart from nature he must have 
rested since the seventh day, for we find no 
account of his labor since. He built the 
world, and rested on the seventh day of 
time, but nature has never ceased to build, 
ever at work, taking on new forms and new 
expressions of beauty, to gladden the eye of 
man and keep good her power of maintenance 
and duty of design. 

Let me here state God's essentialities and 
proclivities as a builder and finisher. Let 
us drink as deep as we can of God, quench- 
ing our thirst at every passport offered to 
our acceptance. Let us not think because 
God is power, majesty, grandeur and all in 
all, that we must bow in ignorance and 
humility before his throne of outlayed prin- 
ciples and seek no pickaxe of use to delve in 
the storehouse that contains our first seed- 



104 MAEIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE J OR, 

ling fruits. God forbid that we should show 
no interest in our birth-hour fixed in matter, 
show no inclination to locate ourselves on 
the topmost round of the ladder of ascent, 
and pick our way backwards with the easy 
formula of a practical ambitionist. God in 
nature surrounds every loop-hole of defence, 
fills every brigade of error, and lights up 
every pool of truth, and sweeps every board 
of progress of the haschish of narcotic 
slumber. 



THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 



CHAPTEPw XXLT. 

•jfitfVjpHEN lava had assumed ability to- 
(*ifis^ fashion life, God's grandeur of design 
O9&? was in its swaddling cloth of capac- 
~<^ ity, and earth had to fashion from the 
mind in keeping. Earth can only build from 
the law of intelligence, or intellectuality, 
which runs parallel and co-equal with cause 
and effect, and is the head or brain work 
that precedes motion, the thought impelling 
movement, and it heralds its approach by 
the structure formed. Every casket in out- 
wrought shape containing life has its own 
seed or God-head of power to fashion its 
own individuality or animality of purpose. 
The point fixed on by all scientific explorers 
for the mind's birth in matter is where 
instinct and reason cope for the mastery- 
The bare fact of life proves nothing outside 
of nature, for nature is life. You cannot 



108 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE J OR, 

divorce one atom of animalcule from her 
claim, and every atom of matter is life and 
every particle of dust is a fibre thrown from 
the great volcano of nature and contains the 
•electricity of motion. Every draught of air 
we take into our organs of respiration is 
formed of solvent dust particles, and there- 
fore belongs to nature, but a step in advance 
of earth vision, for the sense of visual 
observation fails to detect atmospheric law 
condition. When matter becomes too 
refined for our vision of matter, it is then in 
<& spiritualized condition and appeals to our 
spirit nature. It is a part and parcel of us, 
holding its attachment to our internal 
capacity of thought, or our internal capacity 
of conscience, the monitor that guides, gov- 
erns and directs our more clumsy team of 
earth proportions. What we now wish to 
compass with the mind portion of our being 
is, what constitutes mind and what element 
in the outside world had the hook of power 
to grapple mind from instinct, or separate 
the grains of wheat from the barley of 
-animal use. Instinct is a want of the flesh, 
a need inwrought in nature, a fibre that runs 
through the molten lava of first principle, 
"The power in matter to build is but a fashion 



THE PROSE AND TOETSY OF LE?E. 107 

in God's eye of rise, a drop in the lake of 
fire and brimstone, that lifts an appeal on to 
the surface of eventful career. The breath of 
instinct breathed into man as the breath 
■of life is the soul element in matter. It is 
matter itself; it is God in decimal propor- 
tion, or in the fractional part of the universal 
whole. There is no such thing as dead mat- 
ter, dead principle or dead God. The terms 
are co-equal in import, but fashion has 
picked a line of difference that reason is fast 
trailing in the dust. Were it possible for 
matter to become dead, there would be a 
cessation in the wheel of time, a screw loose 
in God's machinery-house, and first princi- 
ples would suffer. God himself would suffer 
and humanity would be on unsafe footing. 
Let us allow, then, the impossibility of 
extinct matter, the utter ^comprehensive- 
ness of a blow destroying God ; for if we 
destroy a single attribute in his structure- 
house, we make God incomplete and insecure 
as a basis on which to rest our salvation. 
God's fundaments, so to speak, are laid in 
matter, or they are a part and parcel of 
matter. Let structured matter, or matter 
en masse, undergo decomposition : — it is 
matter still. You cannot change the solid- 



108 MARIGOLDS EY THE WAYSIDE; OK, 

ity of matter : yon may change its form,, 
change its locality, but every element is still 
in its native dignity of purpose, making- 
God unchangeable at the basis of struct- 
ure and unchangeable with his elements of 
purpose. 

The first structures of animal life that 
found shape on external principle were gas- 
eous bodies of huge proportions, because in 
the newness of earthly outlay the atmosphere 
contained more gas than carbon. Hence, 
gas assumed the lead in the builder's art,, 
and blew forth monstrosities, shapeless and 
almost senseless, for the reason that gas is 
the element that contains the haschish of 
slumber. In the summer solstice, when the- 
atmosphere contains more gas, there is* 
always a predisposition for more sleep ; but, 
as the days shorten and carbon mingles its 
exhilarating influence with the gaseous 
fluids in atmospheric condition, we are toned, 
up to meet the exigences of the change, as- 
in the beginning, when God created man. 
from the dust of the earth, and breathed 
into his nostrils the breath of life, and man 
became a living soul, an exhilarated structure 
through the combined forces of atmospheric 
gases. Everything in nature depends on. 



THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LTFE. 109 

♦God's breathing atmospheric spirit, or elec- 
iric life, into the function of reception. The 
blade of grass is as dependant on God's 
breathing as any formation of animal life. 
"We note decay in the vegetable world, sup- 
posing there is a loss, when 'tis but a supply 
gone forth to keep good the vitalizing force 
necessary for promulgation. For as the seed 
is sown, so would it he but for the decay of 
vegetable matter to keep good the condition 
of vegetable growth. Every variety in the 
vegetable or floral kingdom sends into space 
its own particular element for recuperation. 
.Each element in matter throws off a corres- 
ponding spirit element to keep good the law 
■of reproduction. We see a barren tract of 
land, and we necessarily conclude the fault 
of non-productiveness to be in the interior 
secretions of that portion of earth's locality, 
when the real and true fault lies at the door 
of non-conformity to law in outside principle. 
The earth contains the elements to foster 
whatever nature, or God, sows the seed for, 
but the breath of life breathed from the out- 
side world may be too highly inflated with 
the obnoxious principles surrounding some 
other field of cultured worth. What is meat 
for some is poison to others : — that adage 



- 110 MARIGOLDS BY THE -WAYSIDE ; OK, 

will apply as well to vegetable production as 
to the well-being of humanity. The breath 
of life maybe tainted with the moral leprosy 
of sin, thereby throwing its glamour of 
deceit around our prized bed of earthly sow- 
ing. We are not proof against the alluring 
breath of the tempter's call, unless firmness- 
stand sentinel at our doorway of appeal, and 
turn no willing ear to the fair-faced visitor 
whose offers porteod destruction to the 
receiver. 



THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 



CHAP TEE XXIII. 

en masse, is only soluble by 



'sly® ^e l aw °f gravitation that tends to 
L ir' ; ^f a focus of power. The earth is but 
* the centre of atmospheric by-play,, 
the tendency to solidity of purpose, God's 
finger-mark of actual demonstration to the 
mind of man. Saturn desired to locate 
another territory analagous to her code of 
deal. Atmospheric law was called to active- 
duty by Saturn's demand on the galvanic 
pressure law circulating in space. The 
world of motion is hidden from our external 
gaze. We only live in the present tense of 
actuality. All other life is in the orbit of to 
be, to our activity of demonstration. We 
can only grasp within our power of compre- 
hension, and so run into the channel that 
there is no other world or worlds, because 
our earth vision has limited us within the 



112 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE; OR, 

Tange of the organ of comprehension. All 
motion commences before the eye can make 
<;laim to detection. Motion is anterior to 
sight. It is God's breath stirring every fibre 
of soul and demonstrative to the eye of faith 
and interior capacity of mind. Motion runs 
a line of march from the law of cause and 
effect. It is want that causes motion, 
whether it be physical or mental. Its power 
■of appeal vibrates on the springs of action, 
showing that the interior contains the circu- 
lar saw of motionary evolution. Our man of 
time is the first to make an appeal on our 
interior capacity of movement, for the reason 
that the time-man must first be served. 
First come, first served, is a law of respect 
that is well to be observed, and as the 
figurative man first claimed the board of 
attention, we may well suppose that the con- 
structed claimed of the constructor. God 
fashioned man from the dust of the earth. 
Man grew into being from an earthly basis 
of movement on God's part, from a link in 
his chain of animal financiering. The for- 
mation of animal life, or animal matter, — 
the terms are synonymous in significant 
appeal to reason, — is stratified and running 
in direct line from the fossil or vegetable 



THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 113 

kingdom of growth. The vegetable world 
has its soul element hung in space, and it 
also retains the outreach of principle to fos- 
ter its own keepsakes to a higher standard of 
growth in the outside world. The power 
of respiration is as much a law in the vege- 
table or floral univerccelum of matter as in 
the higher outreach of animal life. All 
vegetation breathes, drinks and eats. All 
nature opens the receptive valves and takes 
to the fount of being the element or elements 
of sustaining life. Man is but an outreach 
from vegetable, floral, animal and mineral 
substances, and, as each possess the combi- 
nation process, you cannot dissolve the 
unitarian compact existing in their broad 
field of labor without detriment to the 
structured greatness of their fashionable 
designs. Man partakes of all the essentiali- 
ties in nature's wardrobe of use, and you 
find the mixtured emblems throughout his 
whole structure of earthly proportion. What 
man claims above the brute creation, and 
what he holds superior and above animal 
law to accomplish, is a mind-focus of power 
that has drifted along God's line of march 
unto its present degree of illuminated bear- 
ing to the world. 



114 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE; OK, 

" To fathom mind is to fathom God : 
For God, his grandeur to express, 
Built Man upright, and did him bless ; 
And, to fulfil his law divine, 
He gave to Man the key sublime" 

To unlock the fountain head of truth, and 
bring God to be recognized as a part of the 
structure he formed. 



THE THOSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

^YSiOD is the circulating element in space; 

||g& the undertone that moves the wheel of 
©|g(e> motion ; the great " I Am," and the 

^4! always " To Be " ; the monitor that 
governs time and stretches the arm of 
strength around the vastness of the eternal 
shores of progress. God spelt the A B C of 
earth, and moved along the grade of intuitive 
knowledge up to the point where instinct 
or reason would lead the day-march of time. 
And when instinct claimed her measure full 
and running at the brim, God placed a spiral 
hook around the running waste and caught it 
above the element of time. We must allow 
the deftness and cunning of God's skill in 
winding matter to its full fruition before 
instituting the key of reason, because matter 
must be full grown in all its soluble parts 
before it attains capacity to reconstruct or 



116 MAKIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; OK, 

organize on a higher or broader basis of 
movement. Matter springs at the touch 
of reason, and moves from the life-giving 
forces in elementary commotion. Are we, 
then, to suppose that life and reason are 
synonymous, — that reason holds no higher 
use than animal existence ? God forbid that 
mind, the key-note of God's power, should 
not possess the faculty of picking itself clear 
of matter. I say, God forbid that mankind 
face matter as the ultimate and finale, when 
the great heart cry from God's nationality of 
worlds is for an ascension robe of life ever- 
lasting. Reason instituted power when 
instinct had glorified itself in the upright 
position of apehood, showing that matter 
has the spiral attributes of growth ; showing 
that God, the magnet and propeller, flour- 
ishes the proviso condition above the 
creeping things of earth when instinct had 
assumed the upright posture. There must 
either be a bar let down, or a step taken 
in advance, because there is no cessation 
to God's wheel of motion. It must turn in 
advance rotation or go back on a retrograde 
movement, and, as God does not fashion to 
kill, there is but one conclusion to arrive at, 
and that is, outgrowth from the God-head 



Tip: PROSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 117 

of power, or the God-head of natural sys- 
tematic law, — -the terms are co-existing in 
and for each other. There is but one 
moving power, and that power must fill the 
whole range of thought ; must beat against 
every cell of our being ; must climb to the 
highest point of intellectual growth and sink 
to the lowest depths of human misery and woe. 
It must fill all nature with its sublime pathos 
of glory, light and love ; must meet and fill 
the great mind want of God the Father; must 
reach around all worlds and encompass the 
beginning and the end ; must move in and 
about all things, and, finally, must quench 
the thirst of God by becoming God. For 
God is all there is. We are all God, a part 
of the tree of life, a branch or twig cut for 
the hand of use that is moving to keep God's 
platform safe and sound, and beyond the 
suspicion of a break. 

Let us attempt to analyze God. The 
thought may seem strange and in advance 
of our reason to maintain, but in the book of 
sacred keepings we are commanded, or 
invited, to " search, and ye shall find ; knock, 
and it shall be opened unto you." There- 
fore, with the Scripture permission and our 
eye of faith wide oj)en, we proceed with 



118 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE; OB, 

our investigation or analysis of God's stu- 
pendous whole. In the beginning was God. 
And God caused a great void to appear. 
We might as well say that God was space, 
and God, or Nature, desired space to be 
filled, and, as God was the beginning, space 
must be filled with God. And God caused a 
separation to be wrought in chaos. There 
should be earth and there should be heaven, 
and water should cover the face of the earth 
and stars should shine in the firmament 
above. Now, I ask, what had God to do 
with but himself, herself or itself? (for I 
have never yet found the point where the 
gender of God could be located). We call 
God " Our Father," when we might with as 
much truth say God our Mother, or God our 
Universal Whole, because God has no climax 
or personality of power. He rides upon the 
winds and the waves, dives to the lowest 
depths of mineral, vegetable and animal sub- 
stance, and mounts the day-god of splendor 
that rides in the eternal arch of heaven. 
All nature claims its God of purpose, and no 
other God mounts the chariot wheel of time 
or rides along the meandering stream of 
eternity's bright and flowing waters. God 
is purpose, is energetic principle, the master- 



THE PE0SE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 119 

builder and mover of the great machinery- 
house that claims its all in God. We cannot 
ojDen our eyes but God claims the move- 
ment ; we cannot take to our casket of being 
the particles that sustain life and individu- 
ality but we take that much of God. "We 
breathe, eat and drink God, clothe ourselves 
with every article of his apparel, and don our 
interior robe from the system-house of inte- 
rior design, which is God's work-shop of 
moving grace and filial bearing to the world. 
Christ said, " except ye become as little chil- 
dren, ye cannot enter the kingdom of 
heaven." Did Christ mean, merging our- 
selves to the smallness of childhood in 
simplicity and guilelessness of heart, or were 
we to become childish in parts to constitute 
the whole in keeping of heaven. Now, in 
order to become God's, it is not necessary to 
change one iota of our structured being, 
either on external or internal principle, 
because we are so much of God, legitimate 
in every part and parcel of our making or 
forming; for we are formed and we are 
made, — formed from the dust of the earth, 
and made serviceable and lasting by the 
clinch-hook of God's indomitable will, that 
could not rest beside the apeish stream of 



120 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE J OP, 

growth. And so to prolong power and keep 
the channel free for the spirit of progress, he 
imbued the acme of his whole being into 
the mind estate of man, and man became 
gifted and partook of the tree of knowledge, 
placed by the hand of God broadcast and 
free for mind to grapple and call its own. 



THE PROSE AND POETEY OE LIFE. 



CHAPTEE XXV. 

}®HEN Judas betrayed his master, and 
for thirty pieces of silver gave hiin 
into the hands of his enemies, Jesus 
was fulfilling the divine wisdom of 
decree, and Judas was serving the hand 
of God in his instrumentality of purpose. 
Both moved in their orbit of to be ; both ful- 
filled their destiny of movement, and both 
were anchored on the eternal shores of prog- 
ress. Both found their true seat along the 
glorious line of march that found its starting 
point on the field of time, and whose end no 
man hath seen ; no, not one, not even the 
Christ who was caught to the bosom of 
the father, and made one with the father in 
purposes of activity and zeal in building up 
the platform whereon would rest the sal- 
vation seat of man's accomplishment. Jesus 
can never arrive at the end of God's pro- 



122 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; OE, 

gressive line. God, the maker and finisher 
of nature's divine law, can never see the end 
from the beginning, can never find the 
place Stop, never find the word Halt in all 
the vocabulary of motion ; for God is pro- 
gressive, the baby-key that unlocks the 
endless tomb of the greater God. God was 
space, was the element of water, was earth 
and all therein contained, the grovelling 
brute, and the upright figure of man ; the 
spiral point dropped to the figure head of 
upright position, the growing line of intel- 
lectual culture, the maintenance of pure and 
holy purposes of activity in the world where 
God is forming daily, and moving on to 
fashion or create from the olden fashion a 
truer God to keep good the line of con- 
tinual march. 

" God lifts aloft a bead of power, 
And weakened footsteps trail behind. 
Until the summer solstice hour, 
When every bud becomes a flower, 
And every laggard on the chase 
Meets God in fragments face to face." 

God claims himself in all the minutia of 
the vast whole, — in the dewdrop that hangs 
a crystal ball upon the nectar lips of the 
blushing rose, and in the rose itself, the mon- 



THE PEOSE AND POETEY OF LIFE. 123 

arcli of sweetness and beauty in the floral 
kingdom ; in the grassy plots of verdured 
green that dot the earth's surface and send 
their shimmering splendor into the blue 
vault of heaven ; and God claims himself in 
old ocean's broad expanse of consequential 
grandeur, in her fitness and aptitude at howl- 
ing discord, and in her quiet and silvery 
ripple that breathes nought but harmony 
across her undulating waves of easy motion 
and quiet beauty. And so I might trace 
God through all the vast arena of nature, 
find him in every locality in the pent-house 
that spreads no liberal wing for the flight of 
time, and find him in the great social eman- 
cipation question that is stirring the heart of 
the earth's wide range of intellectual wisdom 
and sophistry of bearing in the world. God 
is the God of Abraham, Isaac and, Jacob; 
the God of all modern theism and all modern 
hashing and bickering after truth; and God 
is truth, and all there is of truth ; is good- 
ness, and all there is of goodness, and all 
there is of evil ; for God is all-in-all, all-wise, 
almighty, and all-sufficient for time and for 
eternity. Therefore, let us be content that 
God has no partner in the world's formation 
system. Let us be content that he masters 



124 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; OE, 

every emotion of guile and spreads his wing 
of safety around the devil's corner of use. 
There is no pent-house on the shores of 
time but God placed the cover and will 
remove it when he needs that unction of 
glory to crown another principle dropped into 
the mind of man. The grandeur of earth 
and the glory of heaven are in the keeping of 
a God of system. No will or act of man 
changes the rotation of his wheel of motion. 
No interior principle suffers from neglect of 
use. God moves when the occasion demands 
a movement ; and when his mind, implanted 
in the organic structure of man, can compre- 
hend the component parts of the great 
whole, then will his every movement be 
understood, and man will grasp the hand of 
God with the friendly clasp of recognition. 
Man has never comprehended the glory of 
God ; it has been a mountebank of super- 
stition and a mythical structure for mind to 
ramble around and become fogged under the 
shadow of God's wing:. 



THE THOSE AND TOETEY OF LIFE. 



CHAPTEE XXYI. 



W*f*r> H -^ Christian world have always 
<^)g3 dressed God in the sham clothing of 

T^jt 5 figurative assumption; have ever seated 
~0 L him so far away that reason faltered 

in the chase. It was like searching for the 
lost Tribes of Israel who having wandered 
from the fold of God, ever after found 
unsafe footing, and to-day have become 
a myth along the rugged shores of time. 
And so has reason wandered from the fold 
of the true God and seated itself on the 
scarecrow of public favor, and biased by 
the bank stock in church creed that 
flourishes nought but the golden calf and 
fatlings from the first flocks of monied 
monopoly. Church creed is a libel on the 



126 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE; OR, 

true breastplate of God's glory that should 
be worn by the reasoning faculties of man. 
The church has monopolized the entire 
fabric of man's platform of fidelity to God. 
What but a graven image of man-worship 
is our mother Church of England, our 
mother Church of Kome, and, I might say, 
our mother Church of the American field of 
worship that winds its sluggard footsteps 
around no God of soul elevation or v heartfelt 
sympathy of emotion. The church is God's 
pent-house of scorn ; his mock ceremonial 
service that does away with thought, and 
charms the captive soul with the promise of 
honor and distinctive merit in the kingdom 
of heaven. How, I ask, can the binding of 
faith to the altar of ceremonial service 
affect the great natural law-heart of God ; 
affect the still later dispensation, whose 
binding charm and glowing face reflected 
deeds instead of the falsity and sham that 
cover the truth and purposes of religion, 
and cast the dampness of doubt around the 
heart that is seeking for the bread of 
heaven to cast before the mind's eye, and 
become sustaining food when the shadows 
fall across our rosy walks in life ? 

We cannot love what we do not under- 



THE TKOSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 127 

stand or appreciate as true, — that would be 
an inconsistency in human nature, — and to 
love, reverence and keep God, we must hold 
on to every garment in his wardrobe of use 
and every attribute in his field of labor. 
Every gem in his casket of world renowned 
splendor must be brought to our shaded 
eyes, that we, catching the glimmer of a 
single gem, may bare our sight to the lustre 
of the whole. No separate part can we take 
as a beverage that will satisfy our thirst, 
from a drink at the great pool of life that is 
running its even course up to every dormant 
faculty in the nature of man. God's spirit is 
abroad in this summer of noontide splendor 
in the world. God shoots his effulgent rays 
of promise to the understanding and to the 
wants of human hearts that have suffered in 
the bondage and toils of mythological errors, 
sprouted by the hand of man from seed sown 
on barren waste. There is no part in God's 
kingdom but what must undergo a thorough 
searching. The schedule is wide, deep, and 
filled with every variety of interesting won- 
ders and interesting facts that will bring 
man to a stand point of decision with regard 
to his outfit and mission in life. God keeps 
man's wheel of motion under the hamper of 



128 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; OR, 

discontent ; keeps liim beside the litter of 
care, perplexities and discouragements, that 
banish the thought of rest. There is no rest 
for man, no rest for God. Both act in uni- 
son in and for each other. Both fill the 
orb of constitutional oneness and both bal- 
ance on the pivot of success, and, I might 
add, both surround the throne eternal with 
the evident intention of picking their way to 
the height of science to maintain. God 
places man on the direct line of research 
with himself, and his beckoning hand ever 
appeals to man's reason ; ever says, come 
thou, for the way is open, and I will lead 
through all the devious ways that seem pent 
and dark to the unreasoning faculties of 
man. God's truth is God himself, the vice- 
gerent of success, the ploughshare that cuts 
to the centre of all shades of error, and 
flaunts its spotless garments around the 
towering pinnacles of false fame. When 
the last trump shall sound, then will the 
last truth be told, and man himself will be 
all there is of truth and all there is of 
God, for God will then be applied to every 
portion of our being, and we be caught to the 
bosom of the true father and flourish our key 
of strength, with the wisdom that follows, in 



THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 129 

every footstep of progress along the mean- 
dering stream that starts on the border 
course of time, and flourishes its apex of 
glory around every starry realm that lifts a 
head of grandeur against the defiant skill of 



MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE I OR, 



CHAPTER XXYII. 



Sfe^HERE is one more point concerning 
^)^ the platform on which individuality 
^jS must maintain its own principality of 
^ power, and also maintain its free, 
in-born gift of rinding God by the light of 
its own reason. Every person should be a 
distinct power, or weapon of use, to flourish 
before the vineyard of the Lord ; should be 
the sailor of his own destiny-ship, and let no 
insecure hand grasp his rudder of travel. 
There is no place from the cradle to the 
grave for man to halt or play truant beside 
the roadside of onward career ; no place to 
drift into the sloughpools of indolent habit 
or weave a web of idle dreaming that sifts no 
knowledge in our pathway of accomplish- 
ments for eternity. The web of life, — how 
intricate and how beautiful we can make its 



THE rnOSE AXD POETRY OF LIFE. 131 

blended colorings ; how easily we can patch 
up all the deformities that arise from sources 
outside of .our own control, by the willing- 
ness of the Christian's heart to see good in 
every movement of the extended hand of 
God the Father, and God the Mother, of our 
outspoken destiny that never leaves us. 
That one word, fraught with so much mean- 
ing, ever stares us in the face ; ever holds 
aloft the transmission key that unlocks the 
ordeal rooms for our untried feet to traverse, 
and ever lights God's treasure-house with 
the promises of our fulfilment. God never 
requires beyond our capacity to perform. 
Our tapers of use are lit at our commence- 
ment hour. Some culminate in dazzling 
splendor, while others waste away or only 
serve to light a darkened pathway. When 
mankind can look spirit communion in the 
face as an absolute fact, and as the truth 
for which mankind have jungled into all 
sorts of isms to obtain and make fast with 
the clinch-hook of reason, then will spirit- 
communion become the elongated method 
by which mind will become acquainted with 
all its God-given attributes, and become 
acquainted with the throne eternal and all 
the keepsakes therein contained, -and all the 



132 marigo:lds by the wayside ; or, 

mansions of the blest shall undergo the 
scrutiny of the lovers of the Lord. 

When Haman sought the overthrow of 
the Shushamites, he was laying waste his 
earth career and laying low his pinnacle of 
glory on which he hoped to reach the 
extended hand of God. How many there 
are who dig a pit for themselves in seeking 
the destruction or downfall of others who are 
climbing the ascending hill of life. Haman's 
gibbet which he caused to be erected filled 
his measure of content, until the tables were 
turned and he was doomed to meet the fate 
destined for another. Selfishness is the 
great besetting sin that is overwhelming 
mankind with its cloven foot of distinctive 
elements of worship. Mankind are gaining 
on that one error, and its tendency is to 
stupify all the noble energies and impulses 
that would drift out to the world with the 
succoring hand of help. God speed the day 
when Gethsemane will sprout a broader 
platform than the stool of selfish monopoly 
that carries no waif of comfort outside of its 
own precints of utter abandon to self. From 
my spiritual locality I have tested all party 
spirit ; have tested the fundamental work- 
ings that actuate the erreat heart of societv, 



THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LD7E. 133 

and my mind conviction is, that the great 
army of Armadgeddon is wallowing in the 
hot-bed of selfish delusion and trickery, that 
only serves a purpose on the earthly basis 
of life ; and the awakening on the portals of 
immortality's glowing realms finds the spirit 
bereft of the true seed of growth, a dangler 
around the cushioned seats of empty pride. 
"Wo unto the Scribes and Pharisees of this 
generation of learned greatness and piggish 
sectarianism, that blows the trumpet for the 
golden monarchs of empty reign. The learn- 
ing of Socrates never rilled his measure of 
content ; never filled his cycle of greatness. 
The tombs of the Zoroasters never covered 
the glory of their reign. Solomon's temple, 
that reared its mighty head of fabulous 
worth, was a libel on the escutcheon of liberal 
grandeur that reared the golden palaces for 
the buried altars of dead minds sacrificed to 
the god of mammon, and bent no weight of 
glory around the home of accumulation that 
ever stares us in the face with its .shining 
armor of promise, hung on the walls of our 
Jericho of action. 



MA.RI60LDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; OR, 



$&i' 



CHAPTEE XXVIII. 

city o£ the dead is stretched along 
c^ the actual experiences of every-day 



\? 



g&< life. It looms before us when we fail 
^ in duty to any cause our soul agitates ; 
when we fail in the purposes that meet our 
mind's eye, and with the approving voice 
of conscience say, " thy will be done. Oh, 
SOul, conquer and be steadfast to accomplish 
the works that are God-designed and God- 
capacitated." The lumbering wheel of time, 
how slow is its measured tread of motion to 
the idling waifs that be*at the heel of discon- 
tent against the non-deeds of actual service. 
Every talent that remains a dead letter in 
the organic structure of man must be 
brought to the acknowledgement seat of 
supreme understanding, and undergo the 
process of recuperation, and; Tjmwint} the ball 
q£ life back to its starting point, or back tt> 



THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LIIE. 135 

the period of legitimate accountability. 
Man should be above the grovelling con- 
dition of life. He should try his skill at 
meeting God half-way in the interior 
capacity of workmanship ; should learn to 
take God for his standard of accumulation, 
and beat the bars of flight with the wide- 
spread wings that encompass more than the 
air that gives them motion. Man should be 
no Bird of Paradise to flaunt a gay exterior 
before a world he helps to form and helps to 
fill, and also helps to govern by the reins 
placed within the reach of mind exertion. 
Man should be above the platform of toy- 
ship. He should ride the exultant waves of 
noble daring to the accomplishment of noble 
deeds. A mock heroism surfeits society 
with its promises that never reach the stand- 
ard of success ; never folds guilt or the 
appearance of evil "within the pale of succor 
or within the harbor of retrospection, until 
the pruning hook of good example and 
kindly forbearai*ce clears the rubbish away 
from the good seed that will sprout under 
the genial atmosphere of love and appreci- 
ation. Kindness is an inlaid principle, by 
which one human being reaches the heart- 
preeinct of another ; by ^hich the barriers of 



136 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; OK, 

restraint are cast aside, and the confiding 
element that surges to the hea^t of every 
individual surrounded by the tempter's foot 
of daring cunning and crafty malice. Kind- 
ness ever steps to the open doorway of slack 
principle, willing to lay its weakness into 
the anchor-house of another's keeping, and 
drift to the promised land of safety by indi- 
vidual help, God's instruments of salvation 
around the lighted tapers of earth-life. 

Each and every soul must rear its weight of 
sustaining strength, wisdom and council, 
around the brother and sister souls that 
appeal at the entrance track of harmony and 
affinity of motion. Love should become the 
ruling element in society ; the aroma that 
sweetens every beverage presented to the 
lips of -another ; the essence that underlies 
and overtops every movement of reformation 
and every individual charity effort that rears 
its spiral point of beauty to the harmonious 
evangelical mercy-house of God. For there 
is nothing that so sweetens the soul and 
lends its charm to the whole individual 
exterior as love. Its silver-tipped arrow 
perforates the groundwork of God's immense 
whole and enters the interior design-work 
of every structured monument of success. 



THE PKOSE ANTJ POETP.Y OF LIFE. 137 

Love ! it is the glory of the world, whose 
Hypical effulgence lights the pathway of 
heaven, and sends its starry points into the 
new Jerusalem awaiting the time-worn feet 
of man. There is no world so beautiful as 
the one where love presides at its board of 
ambitious movement ; as that Avhere love 
handles the aggressive and defensive weap- 
ons that move around the social and political 
warfarings of society. Love is the great 
pillar of strength whose downy softness lulls 
the soul into the forgetfulness of the sin 
enemy who ever roams around us when 
unhappiness strikes our citadel of strength. 
We are all creatures of tenrptation's call to 
action ; all besieged by the enemy at large,, 
and all hold the stag at bay until our devil 
hound scents the prey and pulls our trigger 
of discontent. "We are then ready for a- 
hunt in the field of sin, unless the angel on 
the other side beckons us away with the 
smile of love and an outstretched hand to 
lead us back to the path of duty. Some 
have larger fields of waste land than others ;. 
some a wider range for devil culture ; but all 
need and are sustained and strengthened by 
the love prop, or corner stone, that upholds 
the great masonio temple-house of God.. 



13S MARIGOLDS BT THE WAYSIDE ; OR, 

Lore builds a nest for every child of eaTth, 
but the lever of hard usage is applied, and 
the nest becomes torn and shattered and 
unable to contain the child, who is thrust 
forth to become a prey to the danglers that 
ever hang around society and are fashioned 
to a great extent in the kiln of unkind 
treatment. 



THE PROSE AND POETRY 01? LIFE. 



CHAPTEE XXIX. 



'y^jOW much do circumstances outside of 
W$3& om " own cou trol bias and form our 
'ygkp character presented to the world. 
"V How much Ave go out from self and 
imbibe the whole characteristics of another. 
How easily we learn to assume the stand 
point of another's opinion and how easily we 
take on degrees of fellowship in the business 
transactions pertaining to the well-doing of 
our brother man. Yie all reach the hand 
of want to the outside world and to the gar- 
nered stores of another's keeping. We live 
for and by the help and magnetic fervor ws, 
lend and receive from eacli othfty. Outside 
of the atmosphere of love we woukl perish. 
or become automatons to rusi on Qur own 
■harfi&s. Love is as essentia! to the sfcral 
as food to the body, — both maintain the 
essentialities of. purpose and work in uni&on 



140 MAEIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; OK, 

of compact to further God's scheme of 
being of the earth, earthy, and of the heav- 
ens, heavenly. What so frustrates our whole 
being with discontent as the gathering spirit 
of non-appreciation ? . What so charms the 
every day life and sends its silvery sheen of 
brightness around the future as the halo 
of loving kindness, not bought or seen with 
the golden glitter of wealth ? Love should 
be the staple article, moving the masses to 
a position of harmonious combination. It 
should rear a flag of liberty beside every 
stream made dark and turbid by the simoon 
sweep of slavery, that sends its pestilential 
death blow to all spirit of progression that 
lifts its head for tho glory of man. Nature 
is love, and God is nature, and God is love, — 
the purest, holiest and divinest of all the 
attributes in his make-house of motion. 
Therefore, love must be the conquering hero 
over whom death can have no power, for the 
last enemy is death, and love will flap her 
wings at the burial service, and with the 
loud acclaim of thanksgiving and praise pro- 
nounce the heavens and earth united. 

The mission of Spiritualism, or spirit 
communion, is to evangelize the world ; to 
lift up the children of earth io the platform 



THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 141 

of heaven's keeping ; to open the road for 
the salvation of all ; to give the sinner — 
and that embraces all humanity — a chance 
to reach God through their own development 
of understanding and pick their own seat in 
the vastness of eternity. God rides upon the 
waves of human events. The surging waters 
of oppression are being toned anew from the 
rippling stream of free-thought that is run- 
ning the grade of public favor and admission 
to the seat of reason. When mankind plant 
the tree of knowledge beside every hedgerow 
of ignorance, the mystery will drop away, 
and God will be recognized as the substance 
of things seen, not merely heard of as some 
far off being of immense grandeur, but no 
power of expression that we can grasp with 
the intellect of comprehension. God has too 
long dwelt in mystery to the mind's eye of 
man, and the cloak can no longer be worn 
with fitting ease, for the great whirlpool of 
doubt is surging to the utter destruction 
of all garments of show, and God can no 
longer keep his policy of worth in the 
pent-house of mystery and personality. 
God travels abroad in this age and era 
of time's progressive march. God lifts a 
head of mightier power than ever before 



142 MAXtl&OLDB BY THE WAYSIDE ; OK, 

tampered with the skill of man's ability qf 
conception. God dwells in the whole arcana 
of nature ; in the whole atmospheric pres- 
sure of vibratory love that fills every air cell 
of motion floating in and around the world. 
God grants a hand of skill to every waifling 
caught in the meshes of despair, and meeting 
the hurling volcanic dashes sent from the 
blasting rocks of personal animosity and 
the de-vil-to-do will of mischief. God grant 
that in these days of sharpened wisdom, 
the glory of the peacemaker will illuminate 
the broad fields of social intercourse, and 
make radiant the garden of Eden, which 
term should apply to every home circle and 
.to every nest of fellowship where love has lit 
the torch of travel. God grant the day not- 
far distant when love shall become a prevail- 
ing epidemic ; when the contagion arising 
from its cutaneous eruptions shall enter into 
every heart and flood it with the moral fever 
of upright deal. 



THE THOSE AND roETUY OF LIFE. 



CHAPTER XXX. 

<§^F mankind would sift more gems into 
*g|} the hard and barren waste of sonl- 
!^j® soil, earth would possess more rosy 
^ patches, and the pathway to heaven 
would become filled with substantial grains 
of pillared worth, that the soul should hang 
on its altar of pride to become the talisman 
to open the world renowned gates of para- 
dise, and plant its glory of accumulation 
on the topmost round of accountability. The 
soul element, or the element that masters 
the crude affinity of nature, is placed in 
juxtaposition or approximate affinity with 
the sounding line of spirit communion. 
When spirits have a plan to mature, or ball 
to put in motion, to give light and truth to- 
mankind, they seek in humanity what they 
can best control ; seek the element of pur- 
pose in degree as they can find it, and seek an 



144 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE; OR, 

affinity in organic structure to make harmo- 
nious the line of communication. Spiritual- 
ists, or those who have proof positive of 
spirit communion, cannot ignore the fact 
or the conditions requisite to the mainte- 
nance of symmetry and the even balance of 
intellectuality. We in spirit life seek our 
mediums from a combination of reasons. 
Those that come en rapport with us are easier 
of control, and those that surge to our 
brink of safety are more readily reached by 
ihe law of sympathy that runs an even 
motion throughout the work-house of nature. 
Spirit communion, to the uninitiated in any 
of the laws that control the truth and 
beauty of the design, think it a farce to 
cheat the credulous part of community, 
and rob them of a few of their dollars 
and cents. We in spirit life do feel and 
know the deceptions that have been prac- 
tised, but we also feel and know that the 
great car of truth will ride triumphantly 
oyer the waves of error. Spiritualism will 
no longer be a concealed fact ; its destiny is 
on and over every shattered empire of false 
glory and pride. It will be the " monarch of 
all I survey" in all the spheres of active 
duty, and in all the spheres where life has 



THE PROSE AXD POETRY OF LIFE. 145 

taken the form of individuality. Spirit com- 
munion is the grandest thought from the 
great fountain of knowledge that could be 
dropped to the earthly wisdom of man. It 
is the beverage that time has ever thirsted 
for ; and as soon as reason could maintain its 
sway, and feel secure of a basil stand point 
from which to rear its truth, it crept to the 
world in a simple and unobtrusive manner, 
for thought to linger around and make easy 
the conquest of comfort. Ifc has now gained 
a footing where naught can disturb its tran- 
quillity of movement ; where all surface 
shadows will only tend to show the transpar- 
ency of their flimsy nothingness. The tide of 
earthly reason is emigrating to the shores 
of spirit lodgment, and the two worlds shall 
join in compact of governmental duty. Then 
church creeds will find no footing in the para- 
mount house of God, for there shall be no 
graven images to take the place of the true 
father, says the later dispensation of Christ- 
ian benevolence and duty to first principles 
in the great drama of the world's salvation. 
Plato picked in the fields of barren waste 
for the minds that then made up the board 
of the world's nationality, and to-day, when 



146 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; OE, 

reason is fledged for a broad flight, this new 
system of worship scarcely seems tangible 
and in keeping with the egotism and pride 
that has ever clamored for God's best opin- 
ion, and ever sought it through the channel 
of the church filter from sin. Plato's mind is 
fast merging to God's seat of power. He 
is so far advanced from the world's ideal of 
knowledge that the world could in no way 
understand the illuminated pages given to the 
students in his classic field of lore. Oh, 
the wisdom, power, expansion and scope given 
to the mind of man ! At its highest altitude 
it picks the crown from the histrionic brow 
of power, and places its excelsior notes on 
the grandest scale of intellectual march. 
Oh, thou God in man, to thee we bow with 
the reverential trust, knowing that thy power 
to save is the indwelling spirit of love, that 
permeates all the vastness of thy design cul- 
minating in the personal God-head of man. 
Some will ask with holy horror if I am 
making man to be God, or God to be 
man, — which seems sacrilegious in either 
sense, — robbing God of all dignity and 
building up man on the downfall of God's 
influential ability ? My object lies in neither 
of these points which the public will choose 



THE PROSE AND FOETEY OF LIFE. 147 

to take up, but in the rippling truth that 
floods my soul with its golden armor of 
brightness. I hear God speaking from the 
hill top of scientific truth, wearing the per- 
sonality of intellectual manhood. The 
figure head of shipendous power may travel 
through all God's worlds and ever find the 
law of co-operation and co-partnership run- 
ning the race of even intensity of purpose. 



SfAMGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE'; Oil, 



CHAPTER XXXI, 

i/S^HE rasping hand of fate inoves every 
■ g$$ element in our capacity-house of 
'y^j8 strength. If the God within our 
~^ interior make-up desires to ride tri- 
umphantly the waves of every reform, the 
builder's art is brought into requisition. 
The carpenter and joiner work of interior 
ability is the God workman within the 
capacity-line of native talent and imprint of 
divine wisdom. The growth of man com- 
menced with the growth of God. Both were 
in the orbit of natural design. Both dropped 
to the world of use when the great crater of 
strength heaved forth the effort at centrali- 
zation. God tunes his march with the 
correct understanding that no flitting shad- 
ows of surface show can impede the free-will 
agency of natural by-laws, of playful activity, 
that surround, encompass and enthrall, and, 



THE PR0S3 AM) POETEY OP LIFE. 140 

I might also add, create the God whom we 
all adore and Hold by the right hand of 
fellowship, to become one with God in filial 
bearing and love to the world. Juno's figure 
head of God captivated the eye of faith in the 
heathen dynasties of power. All glitter and 
show of significant importance was thought 
to be pleasing to the supreme commander 
of human destiny. Faith works according 
to the by-play of educational knowledge, 
which rears a foundation for faith to build 
upon. Faith is the substance of_ things 
hoped for ; the reality that is wrought and 
lived in the imaginary field of demonstration 
before it comes to the actual experience of 
physical testimony of trial. What but the 
spirit of faith leads us out into the field of 
actual labor, to try our chances with the ele- 
ments of success or defeat that rise in our 
pathway or meet us in the various windings 
of daily toil that seem to be apportioned for 
mental and moral experience? (for no part of 
earth's gleanings but ripen for the soul's 
enjoyment and improvement). What but 
they spirit of trust* or faith, leads us to 
search the untried fields of spirit life and 
hold communion with our dear departed 
oiaes, whom death had not the power to 



150 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; OR, 

steal away from our knowledge. In no act 
of the father's do we recognize and feel the 
beauty of the hand divine as in the great 
love-surges that gather our dead to the love- 
lit haven of a more glorious life. Christ died 
that we, through the power of his resur- 
rection, might also become partakers in the 
resurrection of eternal life. Is there no 
principle involved in Christ's release from 
earthly bondage ? In his departure to a 
world of spiritual light, was there no law to 
be obeyed to fix his destiny of . movement, 
and pin it with the star of truth to the end- 
less chain of natural progressive law ? If 
not, if Christ's demise from earth and extinc- 
tion of physical function had no basis of 
active design, only what comported with the 
will of personality, then is life a farce and 
Christ a myth that floated on the world of 
matter to serve the unction of material 
demand. If life has only will for a basis of 
consideration and precision of movement, 
then are we stranded on the shore of every 
day life, and our ship freighted with a cargo 
that would run the blockade of time, and 
anchor in the storehouse of natural affinity. 



THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LIES. 



CTAPTEH XXXII. 



if^OD gave the world a foundation system 
M& whose every attribute is strength ; and 
^Md power to maintain the world's sal- 
^ vation is the law-lever used by the 
hand of divine harmony that exultingly 
sways the orbit of all motion ary chaotic 
elements of progress. If will is at the basis 
of the world's harmony of movement, and 
will be an attribute, or power of mind radi- 
ation, dependant on the construction of 
animal function of being, or spiritualistic 
epilogue of zeal, or finish of man-head or 
God-head, (the terms being synonymous and 
bearing the same affinity of soul maintenance 
to the cause represented), then will is the 



152 3IARIG0LDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; OK, 

basis of structure on the personality of rep- 
resentation or principle in throwing out 
worlds and sustaining them in the orbit of 
sensible rotation, and affixing them by the 
cord of sympathy, or loye chain, to the Ari- 
gosa, or inlaid tributaries, in nature that 
hold the God- of cause and effect. Then the 
God personality blends will with the God- 
ality of natural law, making harmonious the 
coupling power of God and man, or, in other 
words, blending will, which is an attribute 
depending on organic structure, with the 
will power running through chaotic orga- 
nization. If God has affixed will as the 
fundament, or primary note, that sounds 
• the bugle horn of outlay, then God is will, 
or the inharmony that creates harmony 
from the elements of discord. You cannot 
affix or prefix one particular attribute or 
principle to the beginning of time, and 
say, " I have found God ; my one ray of 
light has penetrated to the centre of a first 
cause ; my one torch has lighted up the 
whole arc of God's field of command ;, 
my one fledgling bird can sing the great 
harmonarchy of natural law, outspoken^ 
outgushing, and forever throwing out its. 
invitation or appeal to the centre "figure 



THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 15.3 

encompassed in the ideality of man's for- 
mality of motion, asking for fellowship and 
cohesive assimilation to find God's whole in 
the grandeur of scheme, and in the finish or 
polish of all native lintings that stretch 
through the coliseum of man's figurative 
appeal to the arm system of law, and in the 
drifting halo that surrounds the infinite pur- 
poses of principles in motion, underpinning 
the se.ctarianship of God's nationality of 
wisdom and display of talent that rides the 
waves of time,, and floats the sceptre of sal- 
vation to the soul-God of all things, made or 
fashioned by or from the deep-seated 
internal power of inspiration, that one word 
that fills the great dome of God's whole is 
the summing up of all the scattered prelates 
of power that surround the throne eternal,, 
and clamor for the voice of God to swell the 
anthem of claim to the oneness of a supreme 
rule." It is time that God assumed a stand- 
ard footing on the platform of fact and 
justice of principle. It is time God's perso- 
nality be wound around all figurative outlay,, 
and spread to ensnare the footsteps of every 
generation that is walking towards the trap 
set in the field of truth to gladden the far- 
reaching faculties, and bring out the golden 



154: MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; OR, 

glimmer of ripened intellect that surges to 
the hill of science to meet, as did the Moses 
-of old, the face of God, but reflected from 
the verge of every living thing, and seen with 
the mind's eye of faith and vision of soul the 
high toned characteristics in every feature of 
the grand whole. Oh, God, thy visage rare 
we face, and see in each smiling lineament 
thy thoughtful care for the wandering steps 
of man. And, oh, God, we trace through all 
tlry countenance of love its diligent appeal 
to the searching instinctive faculties drawn to 
the shaping of intellectual manhood, and 
there fostered and toned to dwell in the 
mountain eyry, or God's nest of fellowship, 
which is the success of intellectuality, the 
God-stamp that fashions and creates the sys- 
tem of law, motion and life. God's whole is 
in the beginning ; in the mind's eye that 
•struck out a first cause, and peopled it with 
all things necessary for the stimulating hand 
of time to bring to the fruition seat of prog- 
ress. There is nothing made outside of first 
effort : the one signal gun was the shot of 
success, whose prolonged sound awoke every 
faculty outside the power of love and har- 
mony to fathom. What is to be will be. 
There is no getting away from one's orbit of 



THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 155 

motion ; the track is laid, and we, the des- 
tined travellers, journey along, without the 
power to cease our motion or change 
the course laid down by fate. God has 
placed a lock and key over all possessions 
foreign to our capacity of understanding, 
and no receptacle of God's truth is laid open 
for investigation until the lock is picked by 
the spirit of traverse, that seeks an entrance 
into all the mysterious lodgment rooms in 
nature. The truth of man's ability lies in his' 
future attainments. Until the energetic 
monitor of research is applied to our car of 
thought, we are in the babyhood of incipient 
.activity ; goslings, aiming to be geese, with 
the green dress of uulledgment still hanging 
as a drapery of truth to our position. Mind 
is a principle that will 7iot flourish in an 
atmosphere of coercion. It needs the gentle, 
-coaxing, lover-like way of being brought out 
to the confidence seat of self approval. 
Mind grows rugged and full of healthful 
activity under the bracing element of love 
and the outside voice of appreciation. All 
vegetation culminates to a more honorable 
appearance under the gentle love strokes of 
sunshine and shower, and human nature 
iiourishes best when touched by the illumi- 



158 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; OR, 

Eating spirit of suavity and grace. "When 
God made Adam for the first man, he 
showed his failure in attempt at perfection, 
for Adam displayed majry points of weakness 
to the world. He held out the spirit of cun- 
ning and sophistry, which must have met 
God's approval, else wherefore, in command- 
ing his structure, was the platform laid for 
a footprint of deception '? Wherefore does 
God institute the means to work out the end 
designed, if it be not in keeping with his far- 
searching aud harmonious spirit, that sees, 
the end from the beginning ; sees the buried 
talents needed to awaken the sleepy and idle- 
spirit of progress ? 

God never works in doubt ; if he sticks a 
pin here, lie knows where the next one is 
needed, or required, to keep the fabric whole 
for the incision of time to cut or work out 
the garment, or principle, desired from that 
particular moiety of encompassment. The 
jugular vein that contains the current or elec- 
tric fluid for all life runs through the centri- 
fugal and centripetal forces that constitute 
the harmony of existence. What God gives 
lie also keeps, and fosters with lover-like 
precision of movement. And thus when 
human effort is a gift, the spirit of the gift. 



THE THOSE AND POETRI OF LIFE. 157 

is fostered by the giver. Remember that, 
je who deal out to others, if your gifts be 
tokens of love, love will be reflected on the 
soul camera of life, and if the spirit of hate 
or indifference dictates or sways the out- 
stretched hand or heart in its benificent 
workings for another, that spirit is retained 
by its possessor and grows brighter and 
more effulgent in the hand of use. The spirit 
of a dead letter serves no good, but the 
spirit that fosters a living principle into 
the harbor of safety from impending storms 
gathers a seed into the Christian's fold of 
worship that time sprouts for the advantage 
of God and man, And thus let us journey 
for the benefit of all sovereign and minor 
considerations of power, knowing that the 
finale is as the beginning, — the wheel within 
the wheel of all natural accomplishment. 



My journey by the roadside of life is 
nearly ended, the thread of my jottings 
broken in twain ; but when again reunited 
by the hand of fate, I shall move with a 
different individuality of purpose, and wind 
my key of strength to the speaker's field cf 
use. 



158 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE. 

"Marigolds by the Wayside," I Lave 
gathered as best I could ; as I could find my 
medium in a condition to assist me. There- 
fore, if a straying grass or inappropriate 
weed mar the collection here tied together r 
do not cast the bouquet aside as worthless T 
but remember that there is always chaff in 
wheat, and dust where pearls are imbedded. 



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